‍‍More than 20 populous accounts on Sina Weibo have been shut down by Sina since last week. These accounts all posted NBA related content, including pictures, short videos, which created significant popularity on the social platform Sina Weibo. 

These accounts mostly chose certain NBA stars and teams as the main topics, and had gathered large numbers of fans by posting news and photos of the stars/teams. 

However, they were not in any way authorized by NBA to use the relevant materials, and were not related to NBA at all. So the use of the photos and videos etc. was considered to be illegal and breaching the copy right of the league. 

According to Lanxiong, many of the accounts had hundreds of thousands of fans, with some even having millions of fans. Some of them even were able to have commercial returns by selling advertisements and organizing on-ground events for their followers.  

This is the first time that NBA and Sina have taken actions to regulate breaches of copy rights on Sina Weibo. 

Source: Lanxiong