China's unremitting efforts in establishing a legal framework
for intellectual property rights (IPR) at home and abroad has won
praise.
Michael S. Keplinger, deputy director-general of the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), said China is a
significant contributor and an important player in protecting
copyright owners' interests in the international arena.
He made the remarks yesterday at the 2nd International Copyright
Forum focusing on Internet IPR issues on fighting unlimited and
unauthorized downloads and online content infringement.
"China is a leader and committed to the creativity-based IPR
development model," Keplinger said, referring to two WIOP Internet
Treaties -- Copyright Treaty and Performance and Phonograms Treaty
-- which took effect in China last month.
By endorsing the treaties, Chinese copyright creators will be
granted legal protection in international disputes among the 60
signatory countries.
China took no more than six years in establishing the legal
framework for IPR protection on cyberspace, which Keplinger said
was "an amazing development".
However, Yan Xiaohong, vice-minister of the China National
Copyright Administration, admitted China lacks an effective
enforcement taskforce to supervise and tackle IPR violations.
The general public, too, has limited knowledge of how to get
involved in counter-copyright-violation activities, he said.
"We've long been targeting illegal Internet content carriers but
seldom put surveillance on the mass users," Yan said.
Statistics show 1 billion unauthorized music tracks are download
using peer-to-peer networks every month globally and some 400,000
to 600,000 films are illegally downloaded each day across the
world.
The speed of transmitting information and without geographical
limits, copyright infringement on cyberspace is difficult to
detect.
Yan said IPR efforts benefits not only overseas copyright owners
and distributors, but more importantly it guards and sustains the
development of Chinese Internet-based enterprises.
China is launching a mechanism to guarantee Chinese copyright
owners' rights and benefits by regulating the industry and
collecting copyright fees for each use.
Another crackdown on Internet infringement jointly launched by
the IPR authorities and the public security watchdog will be
announced by the end of the year.
(China Daily July 19, 2007)