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China asks for international help in controlling online piracy

17 January 2008 22:37 by Rich "vurbal" Fiscus | 11 comments

Today Chinese officials issued what amounts to an international cry for help to help in their crack down on internet piracy. "To evade punishment, pirates often locate their servers in other countries or regions, posing very big difficulties for police efforts to carry out (a) crackdown," said Gao Feng, a senior public security ministry official. "Copyright infringements, by their very nature, are international crimes. To effectively curb such activities, (we) need enhanced international cooperation on law enforcement," he said.

"It's difficult to block these websites completely ... as it's hard to arrest a person responsible if he lives in a foreign country," Liu Bin, a Beijing-based analyst with technology consultancy firm BDA China, told AFP.

However, there's good reason to believe that Chinese officials' actual motives have less to do with piracy than controlling the country's population. The plea for international cooperation comes on the heels of a government announcement that by year's end only state agencies will be authorized to provide audio or video on the Web.

It also follows an incident where a man was brutally beaten to death by government employees while trying to shoot video of their dispute with a group of villagers in Tianmen. Many believe that the incident wouldn't have resulted in any goverment action except that it attracted the attention of Chinese bloggers, resulting in an investigaton that's so far yielded a number of arrests.

And don't forget that much of the pirated content Chinese officials are so anxious to remove isn't available through legal channels inside the country - at least not the uncensored versions available on the internet. Chinese police have also made a significant effort over the last several months to "clean up young people's online environment" by locating and closing internet cafes, known in China as net bars, not authorized by the government.

Perhaps even more telling is the overriding emphasis on the internet when it's a well known fact that pirated DVDs and CDs manufactured by organized crime operations are rampant in the area, including many operations which ship their unlicensed goods to other parts of the world.

Permalink to this article

Three strikes law for internet piracy to be proposed in Britain (12 February 2008)

France to mandate ISP monitoring of customers for copyright infringement (29 January 2008)

Suspected virus author in Japan arrested for copyright infringement (24 January 2008)

Police break up large Australian DVD piracy ring (24 January 2008)

Global music sales fell 10 percent in 2007 (24 January 2008)

50 Chinese sites remove piracy links (13 January 2008)

China to censor foreign video sharing sites (3 January 2008)

Yahoo China loses piracy suit appeal (22 December 2007)

China to block American films from their cinemas (17 December 2007)

Recording Industry calls on EU to tackle Chinese piracy (15 November 2007)

Paramount will sell $3 DVDs to combat Chinese pirates (7 November 2007)

Microsoft to step up its anti-piracy efforts in China (7 November 2007)

Chinese official estimates 3-5 generations to clean up IP enforcement (19 October 2007)

China's IP policies not as far from the west as you may think (2 September 2007)

China says pirated DVD production comes from other countries (25 July 2007)

$2 billion software piracy ring broken up in China (24 July 2007)

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Discuss this article!
b18bek9 (Member) 18 January 2008 0:43
i think china thought by telling the united states to fu@k off and that they didnt need any of the US's movies that piracy would slow down..... [ + quote]
xSModder (Junior Member) 18 January 2008 1:07
Wow, I love it. China tries to control it all, they tell everybody else in the world that they need to just shut up, then they call everybody back up and say, "Hey, sorry about that, we were a little drunk. Can we have some help?" [ + quote]
duke8888 (Junior Member) 18 January 2008 6:46
China has street vendors who sell pirate software such as Windows Vista for $10.00 US so I guess they want to stop the free flow so it doesn't kill their street vendors sells. [ + quote]
varnull (AfterDawn Addict) 18 January 2008 7:07
Yeah.. buy your printed 360 games from us instead of downloading like we do to get them in the first place.. I detect a "shot myself in the foot" coming from China here.. Ol' Brown was heading for Beijing yesterday.. I wonder if it has anything to do with possible import restrictions against shoddy Chinese goods unless they do something about piracy?? I can just see another "war on terror" happening behind the scenes.. because we all know downloading films and games directly funds terrorism don't we kids? Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work.... Commercial "pay for" software = made by software developers who want paying... see where I'm going with this? [ + quote]
usernamex (Junior Member) 18 January 2008 11:52
China will now sell DVD's cheaply in the US... that are covered in by a thin film of nuclear waste and lead. :) [ + quote]
redux79 (Member) 18 January 2008 14:12
*Quote:* The plea for international cooperation comes on the heels of a government announcement that by year's end only state agencies will be authorized to provide audio or video on the Web. What incentive do other non-communist countries have to help china control their populace? The US already has its own s* storm with the economy slipping down the tubes and bush still in office. Maybe certain AA company's wouldn't have a problem working for a communist nation; they wouldn't even have to go to trial! They would just get a name and address, beat the crap out of whoever opens the door and burn their house down! Government control and the media mafia a match made in heaven. [ + quote]
sssharp (Junior Member) 18 January 2008 20:03
Maybe certain **AA company's wouldn't have a problem working for a communist nation; they wouldn't even have to go to trial! They would just get a name and address, beat the crap out of whoever opens the door and burn their house down! They will try in a few weeks probably. We should turn our back and let the chinese communist's just destroy themselves. They make the country one of the worst place for the population. Our help should be given to people in this country with all of the poverty happening here. [ + quote]
ZzeusS (Junior Member) 19 January 2008 9:05
hahahaha The humor and irony of this entire article really lit up my Saturday morning. China: We need help. People are posting police brutality videos and we can't stop it! Planet Earth: Er, yes. Let's try looking within your borders first. Reduce China's theft from the world by, oh let's say a couple billion, then we'll talk again. [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 19 January 2008 13:31
Next they will ask the US to help them censor content as well.... [ + quote]
dedsetmad (Newbie) 19 January 2008 16:23
Gold LoL at China. What a joke these backward little countries are.Har,har,har,har,har,harhhh. [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 16 February 2008 18:06
Seems to me that china is having some major problems at hand. [ + quote]