Nine Chinese websites are being fined and blocked from running illegal online music services, according to China's Ministry of Culture recently.

The ministry has completed a check of website operators in the past three months, and has singled out nine websites that were illegally selling music for which they didn't have the distribution rights or had not applied for authorization to sell the music and conduct online commerce.

The ministry said that www.9sky.com and www.music.sogua.com were asked to pay fines and stop their illegal services, as they didn't have approval to conduct online commercial activities.

Two other websites, www.a8.com and www.music.tyfo.com, will be fined for offering foreign music not officially approved by the ministry.

"They should stop the service and submit their play list to the ministry for approval." it said.

The ministry didn't elaborate on the other suspended websites, saying their investigation is continuing.

Local cultural departments also banned games containing obscenity, gambling and excessive violence, including "BloodRayne 2" and "Obsure."

Companies publishing "FreeStyle Street Basketball" and "Legends of Empire" were fined for selling these online games without official approval.

Cultural authorities in Sichuan, Hubei, Henan, Jiangsu provinces and Chongqing municipality closed down 29 private servers for illegally providing online games.

"It is necessary to crack down on illegal Internet business to ensure better protection of intellectual property rights," an official with the ministry told Xinhua.

Statistics show that China has 111 million Internet users, second only to the United States.

Last year, China's online music sales totaled 3.6 billion yuan (US$450 million) and sales of online games amounted to 2billion yuan (US$250 million).

(Xinhua News Agency August 11, 2006)