China Starts Clamping Down On Selected Live Streaming

By Brian Cullingworth, Last updated Apr 21, 2018

Gambling among the genres targeted

China‘s Ministry of Culture and Tourism has tightened its crackdown on illegal online games, live-streaming apps and websites hosting illegal performances, it announced Tuesday.

According to the Xinhua news agency, the ministry has ordered app stores to check the qualifications of live-streaming apps. Nearly 5,000 live-streaming apps have been investigated and 370 were closed.

A total of 14 companies were blacklisted by the Ministry after being found to have put live-streaming apps into app stores using fake business licenses. App stores were asked to close 57 apps made by these companies.

Thirty ‘performance websites’ were investigated for illegal performances involving pornography, violence, gambling and superstitions, including websites that did not require performers to register with their real names or their identity.

The ministry also investigated 50 online games for illegal content or content that ‘instigates crime or compromises social norms.’

Some games did not adopt measures to prevent juveniles from internet addiction, and some did not require real-name registration or protect users’ information, the ministry said.

Brian Cullingworth

Infopowa news was a staple of Casinomeister’s news from 2000 until 2019. Brian Cullingworth was the main writer, contributor, and was one of the most knowledgeable persons I have ever known involved in the online casino industry.

We first met in January 2001 at the ICE in London where I observed him going booth to booth interviewing online casino, software, and licensing jurisdiction representatives. Brian was also heavily involved with our forum as “Jetset“, he was involved as an informal consultant to eCOGRA, the OPA, and was a player advocate who assisted countless aggrieved players with his connections to industry folks. He also published “Casino Cautions” via Infopowa news for quite a number of years. These can be found in our news archives.

His passing in February 2019 was a dark day for us. He will be forever missed.


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