China makes headway on combating online infringement and piracy

The easy access to Internet makes it a new trend to sale infringing or pirated commodities via Internet. Lately, the anti-pornography and anti-illegal publication departments in Suzhou, Shanghai and Qiqihar investigated many cases related to distributing infringing and pirated goods via Internet. And these cases bear three characteristics.

First, online sales of infringing and pirated goods take a surprising proportion of the market, e.g. the share of books sold via Internet bookstores nearly accounted for 30% of the sales in the whole book market and many of the online bookstores had a finger in the pie.

Second, the infringing or pirated goods are manufactured soon after the legal publications are put into the market, e.g. from September 2 when some best seller was officially published till September 9, only via www.taobao.com, 105 store were suspected of selling its pirated edition, the officer of National Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publication Office told the reporter.<

Third, the cases related to distributing infringing or pirated goods rolled in various kinds of people. At present, setting up an online bookstore merely needs checking the registrant’s real ID, which makes it possible for any kinds of persons to own online bookstores.