By Xin Haiguang

At the night of January 22, VeryCD, one of the most famous resource download websites in China, shut down its music channel and video content downloads suddenly.

Although it is still operating, without these two core services, the survival of this peer to peer (P2P) file-sharing website is unlikely.

Chinese netizens, who have got used to finding free resources on VeryCD, were also surprised. Some users even lamented that "China is saying goodbye to the era of free download."

Huang Yimeng, founder of VeryCD website, also complained on his microblog: "Despite seven years of hard work and accumulation, this website has to be shut down without negotiation."

VeryCD is a small company located in Shanghai, with only a few dozen employees. But its influence on the Chinese Internet has far exceeded its size. Through the promotion of P2P downloading software, eMule, VeryCD brought together millions of users. On the VeryCD website, they share their music, TV shows, movies, and books. Of course, these are free, and a considerable number are pirated.

VeryCD has existed for seven years in China and encountered several setbacks before, but it couldn't dodge the authorities this time. The bitter experience of VeryCD is closely linked to the background of China's recent efforts to crack down on Internet piracy.

Before VeryCD, China banned a series of P2P download sites, including one of the largest P2P portal sites, BTChina. BTChina was closed in December 2009, just after US President Barack Obama's first visit to China. VeryCD was hit right after Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the US, suggesting that China may be intending to show its determination of protecting intellectual property rights by turning a sharp eye on online downloads.

In fact, in addition to alleged piracy, there are some other reasons for China to rectify the P2P download market, such as content regulation. P2P software makes free file transfer on the Internet possible. It weakens the government's monitoring of Internet content, and allows the dissemination of a large amount of pornographic and illegal content. Perhaps there was some pressure from carriers, since one feature of P2P downloading software is the excessive usage of network bandwidth.

After peeling off its P2P download services, VeryCD will probably face a crisis of survival soon.

However, the experience of VeryCD is not just an Internet business tragedy for China.

In the US, due to suspected piracy and providing assistance for illegal file downloading, Napster, which is the inventor of P2P technologies and a music download website with 80 million users, declared bankruptcy due to lawsuits in 2002. MetaMachine Company, the business role model of VeryCD, also declared bankruptcy in 2005 for the same reason.

To combat online piracy due to P2P downloading, copyright protection departments in different countries are even targeting normal users and server owners.

Copyright protection is accepted worldwide, but its application to the Internet is controversial. Many people believe that overly copyright protection on the Internet will stifle innovation and undermine the spirit of sharing.

As piracy in China's Internet market is more rampant than it is abroad, there is a strong basis for China to strengthen the effects of cracking down on online piracy. But will China's Internet say goodbye to the era of free downloads from now on? Although the rapid expansion of Internet bandwidth has made media-on-demand popular and allowed commercial websites to promote content-charge services, the low income of Chinese Internet users and their resistance to paid content is hard to overcome. In fact, before the latest ban, VeryCD tried to launch a paid download service, but ultimately failed.

The reason why many users choose to acquire content via the Internet is because they cannot find it in the legitimate market even when they are willing to pay. Even if VeryCD collapses, they will do everything possible to find other download sources.

In addition, in the Chinese market, there are some big Internet companies that are explicitly or implicitly involved in online piracy. They will not yield easily like VeryCD.

In China, the fight against online piracy cannot be won overnight. We should guide consumers to choose legitimate content at affordable prices. At the moment, young people with incomes of only 2,000 yuan per month often have to fork out as much as 50 or 100 yuan ($15) for a movie ticket. No wonder they turn to the Internet instead.