Photo: Sina Weibo

Image providers the Visual China Group (VCG) and IC Photo suspended service following an instruction from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) on Tuesday. 

The administration announced on its website Tuesday that the two agencies violated laws by providing internet news information services without permission and cooperate with overseas companies concerning news information service without security assessment, which seriously disrupted the order of internet communication. 

The office ordered the two agencies to suspend illegal behaviors immediately and launch a thorough rectification. 

The two websites were both closed for rectification on Tuesday afternoon.

Visual China Group, as one of the world's largest digital content platforms, cooperates with more than 400,000 contracted contributors and more than 240 professional copyright content agencies. 

The company's internet content trading platform provides over 200 million pictures, 15 million videos and 350,000 music materials on a daily basis, according to 21Jingji.com. 

IC Photo also has exclusive agency resources of over 300 overseas news agencies and photo libraries including the Associated Press, AFP and Magnum. 

IC Photo cooperates with over 20,000 photographers and provides more than 100 million pictures and video materials to thousands of media and advertisers.

Both companies add value to overseas visual content through collation, translation and editing before providing them to customers, according to 21Jingji.com. 

The information database and cooperation network complicated management, according to Chinese experts, and illegal content might have been added as the two agencies edited picture captions on their own without government certification and supervision. 

The suspension came about eight months after VCG hit controversy in April for claiming copyrights on the first-ever photo of a black hole as well as the Chinese flag and national emblem, prompting an online debate on Chinese copyright practices. 

The paper.cn reported in April that VCG and its subsidiaries filed more than 2,000 lawsuits alleging copyright violations in 2017 and 2018.

Following the incident, China's National Copyright Administration urged image providers to strengthen their IPR management mechanism.