I learned about the Tudou site only recently. And even more recently found reality-bytes.net which embeds the Tudou player in its own catalogued pages. The
Tudou player is incredibly slow about streaming video, apparently depending on what server is being used to host the content. So, rather than watch the
episodes as they stream, I'd taken to downloading the flash video files and watching them later. I managed to get the whole seasons of Thailand, Amazon,
Vanuatu and Fiji. I was taking my time, picking seasons that I wasn't as familiar with.
I was about halfway through All Stars when around episode 8 I ran into that notice written in Chinese. After some rooting around, I noticed that even episodes I previously watched were now serving up that notice. Obviously something had happened. The reality-bytes.net blog owner also published a note saying it appeared much of Tudou's Survivor content had been yanked.
I thought it must have been a copyright issue, but looking at recent news about Tudou, I guess they've been under pressure by a government or quasi-government agency to review content for "decency" or risk being shut down. China has other censorship concerns than protecting CBS's copyright. I don't know if that's it or not, but I'm guessing Tudou is at least paying lip service to content review in order to prevent being shut down.
I asked the same question over on the Sucks board about what the disclaimer notice above says. One respondent claims it says something along the lines that Tudou is in the process of reviewing the content. Don't know if that's true or not, but it might leave the door open to the episodes being restored.
Not all of the episodes are gone. It's hit and miss, but I've found an episode here and there -- in the Africa, Australia, Palau, Micronesia season, for instance -- that are still streamable/downloadable. I'm not sure if that means they were never deleted or if they've since been restored.
I was about halfway through All Stars when around episode 8 I ran into that notice written in Chinese. After some rooting around, I noticed that even episodes I previously watched were now serving up that notice. Obviously something had happened. The reality-bytes.net blog owner also published a note saying it appeared much of Tudou's Survivor content had been yanked.
I thought it must have been a copyright issue, but looking at recent news about Tudou, I guess they've been under pressure by a government or quasi-government agency to review content for "decency" or risk being shut down. China has other censorship concerns than protecting CBS's copyright. I don't know if that's it or not, but I'm guessing Tudou is at least paying lip service to content review in order to prevent being shut down.
I asked the same question over on the Sucks board about what the disclaimer notice above says. One respondent claims it says something along the lines that Tudou is in the process of reviewing the content. Don't know if that's true or not, but it might leave the door open to the episodes being restored.
Not all of the episodes are gone. It's hit and miss, but I've found an episode here and there -- in the Africa, Australia, Palau, Micronesia season, for instance -- that are still streamable/downloadable. I'm not sure if that means they were never deleted or if they've since been restored.
