One of the country's most popular websites that allows Web users to download overseas films and television series for free said Saturday its closure on Friday, or World Intellectual Property Day, was due only to routine maintenance.
The website, www.yyets.com, calmed fears among netizens after it recanted a promise it had made on Friday to remove pirated dramas. In an announcement on its Sina Weibo account, the website said it was shutting down. Many netizens said they thought the website had been targeted in an anti-piracy campaign and had been shut down for good.
On Saturday, the website's Weibo posting said it was not closing permanently and had only closed on Friday for maintenance.
The posting said that it would continue not to charge fees for downloads. "We hope our users will give their money to those who need, such as the people affected by the earthquake in Sichuan Province," it wrote, warning users not to sell or commercially distribute the productions they download.
Some insiders told the IT news portal, donews.com, that www.yyets.com might have closed on World Intellectual Property Day to avoid being caught by the authorities for allowing downloading of pirated films.
Although the announcement on Friday said it was closing, it also provided at least seven other sites that users could use to download pirated television dramas from the US.
Web users worried that they would never be able to access films that have not been allowed to be shown in China's theaters, said media reports.
About five major Chinese websites offering free downloads of pirated movies were shut down on Friday.
Among those closed was siluhd.com, which had claimed to be China's biggest high-definition movie website. Beijing police detained the website's CEO and eight core staff members on Wednesday.
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