Over 4 billion people watch Olympics opening event

around the world watched the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics which was also broadcast by over 1,600 unauthorisedwebsites, mostly in developed countries.

According to statistics from the Beijing Olympic Broadcasting company, over four billion people watched theopening ceremony on August 8.

The event was carried by more than 1,600 unauthorised websites from August 9 to 11, of which 85 percent were foundin developed countries, a Chinese official said yesterday.

Yan Xiaohong, vice minister of the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC), said the Chinese organiser and the International Olympic Committee had monitored the unauthorised broadcast after the opening ceremony. Besides overseas unauthorised websites, more than 100 websites inChina were found flouting the rules.

"For those found in China, we ordered them to eliminate the unauthorised content immediately. Meanwhile, the telecom regulatory authorities kept a close watch on them," said XuChao, a NCAC official.

Xu said most websites deleted the unauthorised content on the NCAC alert. But there were illegal websites which did notact according to the requirement.

These illegal websites, which were not registered withChinese authorities, were shut down in line with Chinese laws.

But the number of websites which had been shut down was "verysmall", Xinhua news agency reported.

For those foreign websites, the NCAC had no right to shutthem down but blocked unauthorised content.