China has upped the ante on censorship, moving beyond the Great Firewall of China to mandate that all Internet video sites must be state-owned. Websites would then be required to follow the same censorship rules as television broadcasters and newspapers, which are already operated, and strictly regulated, by the state. The move is aimed at clearing up technical difficulties in regulating video on the Internet, an area that the Chinese government has sought to control but has been less effective at censoring than the standard Internet. However, plenty of ambiguities remain.

A number of domestic video sites are waiting to see if the government will take control of their private enterprises, and it's unknown how foreign sites like Google's YouTube will be affected. The regulations appear to be aimed at censorship rather than socializing a booming new industry, but the new rules could be the most effective way of impeding YouTube's dominance. What's more evil than Google? A Google partly controlled by the Chinese government.

Contact information for this author is not available.