China nimmt 205 Webseiten offline

Wie The Australian gestern berichtet hat, wurden in China 205 Webseiten geschlossen, die in engem Zusammenhang mit Softwarepiraterie stehen sollen:

Officials said that between the end of September last year and January they had investigated 436 cases, including about 130 at the request of overseas industry associations, and ordered 361 offenders to stop their infringements.

“Piracy of intellectual property on the internet has seriously harmed the interests of copyright owners, leading to a large number of disputes — and thus disrupting the orderliness of the internet,“ Yan Xiaohong, deputy director of the National Copyright Administration, told a news conference in Beijing this week.

Mr Yan said that in the latest action, authorities had imposed fines totalling 705,000 yuan ($117,000), confiscated 71 servers and transferred six cases to courts for prosecution. One of those had led to a conviction, Mr Yan said.

Ich denke ja, dass das alles nette Propaganda ist, die den Westen beruhigen soll (und damit vielleicht erfolgreich ist). Anderswo liest sich die tatsächliche Aktion gegen Raubkopien, ähem, ganz anders. Aber ich finde gerade den Artikel nicht mehr, das war letzte Woche, bei The Register oder The Inquirer, wo ein Leser in China mal auf Suche nach ‚legalen Kopien‘ ging und praktisch gar nicht fündig wurde. O-Ton Händler von Computerladen: „Die Kisten hier kommen alle mit Windows XP OEM, da kann ich Ihnen eine Kopie von machen.“ Das war komplett mit Fotos, und schön in den Zusammenhang einer früheren Bereinigungsaktion gestellt, und wo einem Straßenhändler 1 von zwei Dutzend Kisten weggenommen wurde. Webseiten, die man offline nimmt, sind natürlich weit öffentlichkeitswirksamer.

UPDATE: Habs wiedergefunden: The INQ goes on the trail of Chinese pirates vom 09.02. Daraus:

There have been some great spots on TV here. My favorite was staged in Beijing, right on the steps of the Great Hall of People’s Justice. A huge industrial shredder roaring away, the Security Bureau officials cramming armloads of pirated DVDs into the chute, and a spray of tainted shredded plastic raining down on the front steps. Exhilarating.

That was last year. Now, according to the Peoples Daily Online, the official government press, „Masses of pirated products have been seized, sales of certified products have risen and business owners are now much more aware of IPR protection in China thanks to an intensive anti-piracy campaign, a Chinese official has announced.“ […]

Directly across from this purveyor of evil was another identical operation. But this was different. There were two policemen surveying the wares. Aha! Caught red-handed! This boy was going down, I could feel it. I could smell it. „Get ready to take some action shots!“ I said to my fleet-of-foot little photographer. Ambling over to the seller’s ersatz place of business, I expected to see the brown humus waste material contact the air circulation device. Avast ye pirates! No. The police were shopping for DVDs. My wife used her good judgment and did not photograph the police shopping at that stand. She said it would most likely end in tears for both of us if she did. Smart girl.

We passed eight more portable places of business before we made it to the bus stop. They are all set up about the same. They all have more or less the same titles, and the prices are identical (note that if you do want to buy from them, don’t photograph them first). Movie VCDs are ¥4 (about 26p), movie DVDs are ¥5 (about 33p), and most computer software is ¥8 (about 52p). So far, at his point in our adventure, it seemed there were more places than last year to buy these goods. By a rough guess, three times as many.

Das geht die ganze Zeit so.