Chinese netizens are outraged by six domestic Internet giants, including Sina and Tencent, that announced they will terminate cloud storage services as of July 1. According to the six companies, the shutdown was unavoidable because they have no way to censor what is stored. Owners of files containing pornographic or pirated content could easily distribute these illegal files via the storage services' "share" function.
Netizens, however, did not buy the explanation, viewing it as a regressive backsliding for China's Internet era. "It would be more likely for us to read or watch pornography through other media like video-streaming websites, so why not simply ban the whole Internet?" wrote one netizen. Another commented: "Cloud storage is an advanced Internet technology. How can we stop its development?"
While many netizens criticized the government and the six tech firms for attempting to control the Internet in such a rudimentary way, some analysts viewed the shutdown from a different angle, attributing it to the fact that cloud storage tends to be complimentary. To them, it is hard to identify a viable business model – charging a fee will drive some people away, but remaining free means no money is coming in and stored content is harder to control.
At present, only Baidu and Qihoo360 are retaining their storage services, but nobody knows how long that will last and whether or not they will remain free of charge.
Old Version
