Foreign and domestic Internet copyright holders are treated as
equals in China and if there is clear evidence of a violation, the
government will conduct a thorough probe and see to it that the
guilty are punished, a senior official has said.
The government's resolve was evident during the four-month
special action program of National Copyright Administration of
China (NCAC) when about 130 of the 436 cases were probed at the
request of overseas industry associations.
A total of 361 offenders were pulled up for copyright violation,
NCAC Deputy Director Yan Xiaohong told a news conference
yesterday.
The number of foreign-related cases on the Net was very "high",
but 90 percent of them were handled properly in the four months,
starting from September.
After careful examination, NCAC decided to directly deal with
302 cases in 31 provinces and cities.
Nineteen provinces and cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and
Guangzhou, were marked out as key areas of investigation, with
about 50 major cases.
During the special campaign, fines worth 705,100 yuan ($88,000)
were imposed, eight computers and 71 illegal servers confiscated,
205 illegal websites closed, and 6 cases transferred to judicial
departments for investigating criminal liabilities.
Copyright owners' organizations, such as China Software Alliance
and Motion Picture Association of America, provided NCAC with clues
to more than 170 cases, offering preliminary evidence for direct
crackdown on infringements and piracy, Yan said.
Statistics show that by the end of last year, China had 140
million netizens and 843,000 websites.
"Internet has no borders, and has unlimited storage space and
its development has increased the number of severe violations and
piracy," he said.
Many websites offer free downloads of movies, music, software
and textbooks without being authorized to do so.
To deal with the problem, China implemented Regulations on the
Protection of the Right of Communication through Information
Network on July 1, 2006.
"The four-month special action program has brought order and
cleansed the Net copyright protection environment," Yan said.
"With the rapid development of Net technology, infringements and
piracy in new forms will come to light. The fight is far from
over."
The special campaign focused on illegal downloads of music,
movies, software and textbooks and cracking down on illegal
"private servers" and "pirated programs" circumventing or
sabotaging technological measures and removing or altering
electronic rights management information.
(China Daily February 9, 2007)