Wang Ying and Zhu Boru

Digital piracy is posing new challenges to protecting intellectual property rights in the Internet era.

While fighting piracy in the physical world is already difficult, where unlicensed copies of software and compact discs can be discovered and seized, digital piracy is doubly challenging to combating cyber crime on the Internet when practitioners are often invisible.

The unprecedented growth of the Internet worldwide has posed challenges to not only policies on communication and trade, but also the task of protecting IPR, said Wang Ziqiang, spokesman for the National Copyright Administration.

IPR protection is an important foundation for the growth of electronic commerce, and the publication and film industries, Wang said.

"Access to the Internet is getting easier and less expensive with great advances in technology, which, at the same time, makes online piracy much more rampant," Wang said.

Internet piracy includes the use of the Internet to transmit, download, sell, or distribute materials either in their digital or physical formats without the express permission of the copyright owners.

"Copyright owners need to increase self-protection awareness while extending their rights into the digital world," Wang said.

In recent years, IPR owners have begun to feel very upset by the advent of the Internet, which seems to be a perfect tool for reproduction and wide distribution.

A number of companies have been hauled into court for providing online downloads of software, music, film or books without permission from copyright holders.

The latest such a case is a Beijing film company suing Sohu.com for providing illegal downloads of its film.

Beijing Forbidden City Films Company sued Sohu.com because Sohu.com apparently allowed netizens to download and see its movie "Sleepless City" without authorization from the film company.

The studio filed a lawsuit last month in Beijing's Dongcheng District People's Court, seeking 180,000 yuan (US$22,000) in compensation.

In March last year, when "Sleepless City" was first being screened in China, Sohu added the film to its "Sohu Online" channel for users to download and watch online.

Believing that Sohu's behaviour has brought it great economic losses, Forbidden City Films wrote to Sohu, asking it to stop the service, according to Beijing Youth Daily.

The film company received a reply from Sohu saying all films on its website were provided by Beijing Golden Interactive Technology Development Company, and Sohu suggested Forbidden City Films contact Golden Interactive to settle the dispute.

After negotiations with Golden Interactive, Forbidden City Films was told it would receive 200,000 yuan (US$24,000) and that the compensation would come from both Sohu and Golden Interactive. However the film company only received 20,000 (US$2,400) and is now seeking the remaining 180,000 yuan (US$22,000).

The case is ongoing.

Anyone who provides music downloads online without authorization should be held responsible, according to China's Copyright Law.

Earlier last year, a mainland MP3 website was ordered to pay compensation of 160,000 yuan (US$19,000) to two Hong Kong-based entertainment companies for copyright infringement.

The Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court ruled in April last year that the website - www.chinamp3.com - well-known for providing MP3 downloads, stop infringing on intellectual property rights of the Hong Kong Go East Entertainment Co and Sony Music Entertainment (Hong Kong).

The website provided downloads of 35 songs by singer Kelly Chen, whose copyright is owned by Go East, and 11 songs by Lo Hau Yam, who is distributed by Sony Music.

Entertainment industry insiders say the judgment will encourage more music producers to safeguard their rights against illegal online MP3 downloads.

As the Internet overcomes size and speed barriers, these technologies could be used to trade everything from full-length movies to computer operating systems basically, anything in digital form, business insiders said.

Experts have predicted that more than 66 per cent of all software will be distributed over the Internet. The increase in Internet distribution and the growing number of users raise the possibility of even greater losses due to piracy in the future, they said.

In the Chinese mainland alone, there were 94 million Internet users by the end of last year, a recent survey from the China Internet Network Information Centre showed.

The number represents year-on-year growth of 18.2 per cent, the survey indicated.

"We have been in fast lane in terms of the number of netizens and the rapid momentum will continue in the next few years," said Wang Enhai, director of the centre.

Legal protection demanded

Existing laws and policies have been put in place to extend IPR protection online.

The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty adopted in Geneva in 1996, for instance, protects computer programs as literary works and grants copyright owners exclusive rights to authorize the commercial rental to the public of original or copies of their works.

Likewise, the treaty grants copyright owners exclusive rights to authorize any communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the Internet.

The World Intellectual Property Organization also regards storing products in digital form in the electronic media as "copying." Offering digitized works for others to skim, read, copy and print through networking also means "copying," it says.

The country has provided a specific legal environment to protect computer- and network-related to IPR, said Li Shunde, a law professor with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"According to the revised Copyright Law, websites have no freedom to provide illegal downloading services," Li said.

The Music Copyright Society of China has sent messages to more than 100 websites believed to offer the illegal downloading service, and a dozen have withdrawn the service immediately. The remaining sites are mainly run by individuals.

The society has also held talks with more than 10 major portals in China and has received positive responses.

(China Daily 04/04/2005 page5)