Story Categories: censorship, China, DVD, Film, Hong Kong, Internet, People, Piracy, regulation, Taiwan, TV,

BEIJING -- A leading Chinese IPR official has admitted that China is finding the battle against online piracy a real struggle - especially the downloading of pics, songs and books. He has called for more muscle and tougher punishments.

Online piracy is a major challenge for the industry given the growing importance of the market here. China had 210 million Internet users at the end of 2007, second only to the United States, and government data shows that China could overtake the US to have the most webizens by early this year.
"Especially following the rapid development of Internet technology, online piracy cases have proliferated, and the fight is far from over," said Yan Xiaohong, vice-prexy of the National Copyright Administration, told a news conference.
Yan described the problem in China as "very severe" and called for stiffer fines and sentences.
The nature of piracy in China is changing significantly. Rip-off DVDs are gradually becoming irrelevant as the pirates focus on downloading movies and music and distributing it through internet cafés and other online outlets. Also webizens are increasingly turning to pirate downloads of Hong Kong and Taiwanese TV skeins, which are banned in the mainland for what the Communist government sees as their risque or politically incorrect content.
During a campaign against online piracy between August and October last year, officials investigated 1,001 copyright infringement cases, which adds up to 60% more than the combined totals in 2005 and 2006.
The campaign shut down 339 illegal websites, confiscated 123 servers and imposed fines of more than 870,000 yuan ($120,000).