The site outage started just a few weeks before the company was left off a list of approved video sites by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.
And while speculation suggests the government may have cracked down on 56.com to punish its foreign investors (the company has about $30 million in funding from American investors, including Sequoia Capital) or that it was taken down as some sort of censorship exercise, you have to wonder if this isn't related to plain old piracy -- earlier this year, for example, the Chinese government reportedly threatened to shut down video site Tudou because government officials found porn on the site.
The outage has been a serious drag on 56.com, which has lost a hefty chunk of traffic, as Silicon Alley Insider points out. But according to one video uploader, 56.com, actively chose to shut out international traffic during Chinese peak times as recently as March, so something's been up there for quite some time.
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