A pirate DVD seller and her global buyers
China has made notable progress in its crackdown on Internet piracy and copyright infringement following months-long campaigns.
A total of 541 Internet copyright infringement cases have been investigated and 362 illegal websites have been closed, since the nationwide special campaign was jointly launched in August by the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC), the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the NCAC said in a statement.
Police have confiscated 154 web servers and ordered websites to delete infringing contents for over 500 times. Fines on websites involved in Internet piracy have topped 1.28 million yuan ($187,000) during the campaign.
NCAC publicized ten Internet piracy cases on Friday, ranging from pirated literature works to unauthorized music, movies, TV series and illicit games.
Online sellers of the pirated book "Zhu Rongji's answers to journalists' questions", which files the former premier's answers to media interviews and speeches delivered overseas, have been fined or received warnings. Other cases were either transferred to public security departments for further investigation or to people's courts for public prosecution, NCAC said.
Wang Ziqiang, an official from NCAC, said at an Internet copyright protection forum held in Beijing on Friday that literature works, films, TVs and games were key targets of the country's crackdown on Internet piracy this year.
The Chinese government have kept a close eye on the protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet, supervising a total of 3,029 major websites in China including Baidu and Sina.
On August 20, the website controller of "Tomato Garden", which provided downloads of pirated softwares including Windows XP, was sentenced to 3 years and a half in jail and fined up to 1 million yuan ($146,000). It was the country's first criminal case of Internet piracy.
"The rapid development and wide application of Internet technology is changing the way of information spreading, and also leading to more diversified piracy and copyright infringemnt activities," Wang said.
In the meanwhile, street pirate DVD resellers sold 30% more than before.
A senior Chinese netizen said, "I change my internet payment into hours package, I can't BT anymore, so the monthly pay package is not attractive anymore."