Under the mantle of the China Written Works Copyright Society, nine writers are suing Apple in Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court for copyright infringement of 37 works, seeking 11.91 million yuan in compensation. The group—in conjunction with other authors—has also waged campaigns over copyright infringement against Baidu and Google. In 2010, Google issued a formal apology to the writers, while in 2011 Baidu deleted nearly 2.8 million items in response to complaints from more than 40 authors ….

In August 2011, a writer named Zhu Jintai became the first Chinese individual to file a lawsuit against Apple when he sued the company for the alleged infringement of intellectual property rights. He resorted to litigation, he said, after Apple refused to provide any information about Apple’s developers.

Apple eventually removed the novel and issued a statement saying that developers, according to the terms of their agreement with Apple, may not violate, misappropriate or infringe copyright. The lawsuit is still pending.

Read more about Apple, ebooks and the Baidu Wenku case via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, Baidu, Baidu Wenku, Google, Han Han, Murong Xuecun, piracy, writers and literature
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

During the discussion, which ended Saturday, the bosses reached a “common agreement” to “safeguard” the spreading of positive information online and “strengthen self-management and self-discipline”, the report said.

They also agreed to “resolutely curb Internet rumours, Internet pornography, Internet fraud and the illegal spread of harmful information” to develop the web into a “positive and beautiful spiritual home”.

Communist Party chiefs made the call in a list of “cultural development guidelines”, which analysts said were designed to strengthen the government’s control of the web and make state-run media more competitive.

See also: 50 Microblogs Shuttered as Web Crackdown Continues and China Detains Three for Rumor-Mongering via CDT.

© melissa chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: alibaba, Baidu, Internet censorship, sina, social media
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The Shanghai 99 Readers’ Culture Co., Ltd., the owner of the store, plans to sell an e-reader application through Apple’s App Store by the end of this year in an effort to capitalize on the increasing popularity of tablet computers and mobile devices.

Mobile device users who download the application will be able to browse the company’s library and purchase copyrighted e-books for just 60 percent of the cost of buying a printed version, according to Yuang Yuhai, the company’s president.

“The Internet is an infinite bookshelf,” Huang said. He is already known for his ability to adapt to China’s changing publishing industry in the Internet era ….

Traditional publishing houses are scrambling to find solutions to what could become a dangerous trend for printed media. These companies have taken to using microblogs as a marketing tool in order to increase the visibility of their products ….

The change indicates that publishing has become a more dynamic and interactive industry, rather than merely focusing on the one-way transfer of information, according to Huang.

Ebook reading is also a prominent feature of Baidu’s new Yi mobile OS, based on Google’s Android. Baidu was said last month to have bought a 40% stake in ebook vendor Fanshu.com; the company’s earlier Wenku (“Library”) document and ebook sharing platform sparked accusations that the company was deliberately profiteering from piracy.

In April, Xinhua reported impressive growth of ebook consumption last year, with mobile phones the most popular platform:

The survey, conducted by the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication (CAPP), covers more than 19,000 people from 51 cities in 29 Chinese provincial regions.

It says that Chinese people between the ages of 18 and 70 read 613 million electronic books in 2010.

Among them, 23 percent read e-books via mobile phones, up 8 percentage points from 2009. Another 3.9 percent read books on e-book readers and over 18 percent read books on the Internet, it said.

Online distribution and reading of novels has become well established in China in recent years, as Wired reported in 2007:

Zhang Muye is a thirty-something office worker who shows up to his Chinese investment company on time. Yet to millions of Chinese fans, he is the author of ‘Ghost Blows Out the Light’, an internet novel viewed more than 6 million times online. It has sold 600,000 copies in print ….

It’s a particularly lucrative game. Zhang is far from unique in China, where writing and reading novels online has become the hobby of an estimated 10 million youth. Yet unlike the music world, where MP3s are threatening to kill off CDs, online novels in China are helping physical books fly off the shelves. Print versions of popular online works sell by the millions and publishers, as well as authors, are cashing in.

“Novel,” the top search term on China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, yields thousands of Chinese literature websites. More than 100,000 amateurs shirk mundane duties to publish their tales of fantasy and love in installments on these platforms. A handful of anonymous web authors have seen their pageviews soar into the upper seven digits. When that happens, print publishers come knocking.

The phenomenon has much in common with the enormous popularity in Japan of ‘keitai shousetsu’ (cellphone novels), which are distributed, read and even written on mobile phones.

Sources:

Chinese publishers adapt to rising popularity of e-books – Xinhua
Survey indicates e-book boom in China – Xinhua
The Chinese Novel Finds New Life Online – Wired

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baidu, Baidu Wenku, books, cell phones, literature, mobile technology, publishing
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The websites involved “illegal groups which claimed to specialize in deleting online news stories and posts with negative influences or hiring other netizens to spread certain kinds of information or opinions on the Internet” for deals totaling more than 1.13 million yuan ($177,000). The China Daily story didn’t provide details of specific public relations deals.

The crackdown was apparently sparked by allegations last year that dairy company Mengniu was the source of rumors that its competitors products caused premature sexual development in children. Mengniu later said the action was taken by one of its employees without knowledge of the company, and apologized for its effect on consumers ….

Internet users commenting on the latest crackdown criticized the government for using the same tactics as the companies it had targeted. “Please shut down Baidu first, then slap your own face after that door is shut,” quipped a user on Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo writing under the name Ostaryr. Another Weibo user, Yan Haitao, said, “Oh, then does this mean the Central Propaganda Office should be closed?”

Hypocrisy aside, many observers regard the closures as a superficial measure, and are sceptical about their likely effectiveness. Bill Bishop, for example, writes at DigiCha that “online PR in China is a swamp, so any moves to drain it are welcome. But the shuttered websites are not the real problem.”

Sources

China Shutters 6,600 Websites for Manipulating Information Online – China Real Time Report – WSJ
China Closes 6600 Websites For Illegal Online PR Deals, Will Not Change Anything – DigiCha

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baidu, competition, Internet regulation, public relations, sina weibo
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

So what might the criticism signify? Is CCTV attacking Baidu for political reasons, or commercial ones? CCTV has a search engine, too, which hardly anyone uses. So do two other big government-run media outfits—the People’s Daily newspaper and the Xinhua news agency. CCTV, though state-run, is not just a propaganda outfit. It is also expected to make money through advertising (and it does). It must be tempting to nobble a rival.

That no other state-run media outlets carried stories on Baidu suggests this is not a government-orchestrated campaign against the company or the internet more generally. However, the Communist Party is wary of the influence of private internet companies, and no doubt keen to see that Baidu doesn’t get too big for its boots ….

Perhaps the most likely motive for CCTV’s attacks on Baidu is that its journalists are trying to do their jobs. Public anger about toxic food, corporate mismanagement and official corruption has emboldened reporters. Journalists at CCTV led the extensive media coverage of a high-speed-rail crash at Wenzhou in July that killed 40 people, until the censors curbed them.

Such reporting embarrasses the party, which likes to boast that China builds big infrastructure projects faster and better than anyone else. The CCTV attack on Baidu could reflect a decision to go after a less protected target. Or not. This being China, no one knows for sure.

Google’s withdrawal from China initially gave Baidu room to grow, but this has turned out to be something of a mixed blessing. Duncan Clark, of technology consultancy BDA China, told the New York Times in July that “Baidu’s biggest enemy is itself. Now that it has vanquished the bogeyman, it’s gotten so large it’s bumping up against the Party.”

Sources:

Bashing Baidu – The Economist
Baidu Apologizes over Unlawful Promotion Activities on its Web – Caijing.com
Building Trust? CCTV Steps Up Attack on Baidu – China Real Time Report – WSJ

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baidu, CCTV, communist party, internet search
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The agreement between Baidu and One-Stop China, a joint venture between the Universal Music Group, the Warner Music Group and Sony BMG, will shut down access to a vast amount of pirated music and promises to broadly reshape the way China’s 450 million Web users gain access to online music. The country has long been a haven for pirated content. Baidu has been one of the chief conduits to it, much to the consternation of record labels, publishers and artists both here and abroad.

Under the two-year deal between Baidu and One-Stop China, the three music labels will license over 500,000 songs, about 10 percent of them in Mandarin and Cantonese, which will be stored on Baidu’s servers and available for free streaming and download on the site’s ad-supported MP3 search page and social music platform, Ting.

Baidu will pay a fee to the labels for each time a song is downloaded or played in a stream. It will also share revenue from online ads if that revenue exceeds a certain amount, as well as provide promotional support for the labels. The companies declined to disclose financial details of the agreement.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baidu, IPR, online music
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The company has gained a reputation in the West for censoring search results, as well as for its tussles with major music labels over its controversial practice of “deep linking” to pirated music tracks hosted on other Web sites. In February, the U.S. trade representative named Baidu as one of the world’s “notorious markets” for piracy and copyright infringement.

That outside stigma has not stopped Chinese courts, Internet users and investors from siding with the search engine, which is based in Beijing. Since Google began directing mainland Chinese Web users to its Hong Kong site in March 2010, Baidu’s market share has soared and its share price has more than doubled ….

Baidu’s domestic legal setbacks have been interpreted as reflecting the Chinese authorities’ growing intolerance of copyright infringement. With Google out of the picture, Baidu has increased its hold over Internet searches. But it has lost some of the Chinese government’s support because there is no longer the threat of a foreign company gaining ground in the politically fraught realm of online information, analysts say ….

“Baidu’s biggest enemy is itself,” said Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a technology consultancy. “Now that it has vanquished the bogeyman, it’s gotten so large it’s bumping up against the Party.”

With nowhere left to grow in Chinese search, Baidu is trying to diversify its offerings: “throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks“, according to one analyst quoted by the NYT. These new ventures include licensed video and music services Qiyi and Ting, and the new Baidu Browser, which bears a distinct resemblance to Google’s own browser, Chrome. In the background lurks founder Robin Li’s vision of “ box computing”, which was rumoured earlier this year to form the basis of a forthcoming mobile operating system.

See also: People’s Daily Launches “Jike” Search Engine, Profiting From Piracy: Robin Li’s Problem Is China’s Problem and Baidu Tests Web Browser as China Search Leader Expands Range, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baidu, Baidu copyright, copyright infringement, Google, Robin Li, search engines
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“Now, in China, you have the “great firewall”, as it’s well known, that blocks Facebook and Twitter and now Google+ and many other overseas websites, and that’s done in part with the help from Western technology, but that’s only half of the story.

“The other part of the story are requirements that the Chinese government places on all companies operating on the Chinese Internet known as a system of self-discipline—in plain English, that means censorship and surveillance of their users. And this is a ceremony I actually attended in 2009 where the Internet Society of China presented awards to the top 20 companies which are best at exercising self-discipline, i.e. policing their content, and Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, China’s dominant search engine, was one of the recipients.”

See also the main page for TEDGlobal 2011.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apple, Baidu, Dalai Lama, Facebook, Google, Internet censorship, Internet Society of China, iPhone, Robin Li, self-censorship, Twitter
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The system, being built in the city of Chongqing over the next two to three years, is among the largest and most sophisticated video-surveillance projects of its kind in China, and perhaps the world. Dubbed “Peaceful Chongqing,” it is planned to cover a half-million intersections, neighborhoods and parks over nearly 400 square miles, an area more than 25% larger than New York City ….

Asked about concerns about political use of the system, Todd Bradley, an executive vice president who oversees H-P’s China strategy, said in an interview last week in China, “We take them at their word as to the usage.” He added, “It’s not my job to really understand what they’re going to use it for. Our job is to respond to the bid that they’ve made.” […]

Corinna-Barbara Francis, a researcher at Amnesty International, said surveillance footage has been used to identify and apprehend peaceful protesters in China, including in Xinjiang and Tibet. “In China there’s ample evidence that they use” video surveillance “to crack down and then criminalize activity which should not be criminalized,” Ms. Francis said ….

Chongqing’s government says on its website that its current surveillance system is outdated, allowing police to directly tap into just 15,000 of the total 300,000 cameras. It wants the new system to be among the world’s most advanced.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amnesty International, Baidu, Chongqing, cisco, exports, HP, Microsoft, surveillance, Tiananmen Square, Tibet, Xinjiang
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Baidu, previously primarily a Chinese-language search engine, made the announcement Monday afternoon, saying Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, was expected to appear on Baidu’s Web pages by the end of this year.

Baidu, which dominates Chinese-language search services here with about 83 percent of the market, has been trying for years to improve its English-language search services because English searches on its site are as many as 10 million a day, the company said. Now it has a powerful partner.

“More and more people here are searching for English terms,” Kaiser Kuo, the company’s spokesman, said Monday. “But Baidu hasn’t done a good job. So here’s a way for us to do it.”

Baidu and Microsoft did not disclose terms of the agreement. But the new English-language search results will undoubtedly be censored, since Beijing maintains strict controls over Internet companies and requires those operating on the mainland to censor results the government deems dangerous or troublesome, including references to human rights issues and dissidents.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baidu, internet search, Microsoft
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall