The opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games was carried by more than 1,600 unauthorized websites from Aug. 9 to 11, of which 85 percent were found in developed countries, said a Chinese official on Saturday.

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

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

Xu said most websites eliminated the unauthorized content on the NCAC alert. But there were illegal websites which did not act according to the requirement.

These illegal websites, which were not registered with Chinese authorities, were shut down in line with Chinese laws. But the number of websites which had been shut down was "very small".

For those overseas websites, the NCAC had no right to shut them down but blocked unauthorized content.

"Our objective was to eliminate unauthorized content, not to punish the websites. Whether they will be fined would be judged case by case," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency August 17, 2008)