|
Home>News Center>China | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Net portal vows to improve management A Shanghai website plans to reinforce its management after being chastized in court for copyright infringement. The case once again highlighted growing legal problems related to online content. On Monday, Shanghai No 1 Intermediate People's Court ordered www.51tuangou.com to apologize on its front page and pay compensation to the writer of a book whose contents it spread illegally. In a statement Wednesday, the company said it would reinforce its management to avoid similar violations. The website, established in September 2002, sells decoration materials, furniture and other products. Last November, author Liao Tian accidentally found a book he wrote published on the website's electronic magazine without his permission. The book warns house buyers about scams from decoration companies. Liao said the book is based on his own experience decorating his house. He published it in March 2001. Liao found the book was uploaded by a registered user of the website. Annoyed at such an apparent violation against the country's Copyright Law, Liao asked the website to "make an immediate deletion of the book contents from the web and make a public apology on the Web." In addition, Liao asked for the identity of whoever uploaded the book. After receiving no answer, Liao sued the website for 140,000 yuan (US$16,930). "We played a passive role from the very beginning. Although we did not infringe upon the writer's copyright, it was still negligence in our work that resulted in the violation," said Zhang Guohua, general manger of the company. Zhang said the company sent a warning to the user who uploaded the book, who never logged on again. "We encouraged original articles from netizens and our members, yet it was really difficult to distinguish copied articles from original ones," he added. Zhang explained that as a formal website with governmental approval, it had long paid attention to copyright problems. "We tried to observe the law, and we also have a lawyer," he said. Zhang complained that such violations are rampant on the Internet and many original articles on his website are illegally used elsewhere. Screening articles is complicated, considering it is the duty of a website to provide a communication platform, said Hu Jianxing, the company's attorney. In China, the first case emerged in 1999 in Beijing when six contemporary writers sued a website which put their novels online without their permission. Earlier this year, a scandal surrounding leaked graduate English exams triggered a heated debate on supervision of Internet. On January 10, only around 20 minutes after the English test started, some examination questions appeared online. |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
