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Chinese Court Fines Apple For Copyright Violations
hackingbear writes "The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled in favor of a group of Chinese authors, and Apple will have to pay them in excess of 730,000 yuan (US$118,000) for infringement. Apple had not gotten permission before selling their books on the Apple App Store, it noted. These cases were the second batch of lawsuits filed against Apple by the Writers' Right Protection Union, which includes prominent members like prolific blogger and novelist Han Han who have become a pop culture star through his creative and cynical writings criticizing the (Chinese) government."
Apple are hypocritical thieves, nothing more, nothing less.
I can't believe Judge Wapner ruled like this!
I'm going to connect some of the dots provided in the summary, perhaps a little too liberally, but it sounds like the Chinese government ruled in favor of writers that are popular for criticizing the Chinese government.
While I'm not their biggest fan, this is a pretty big step for them.
Granted, it's not like they were explicitly ruling in favor of that so much as not wanting American corporations profiting off of things that are legitimately original Chinese works...ie, don't exploit our people unless you pay them for it.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
...North Korean court fines Canadian tourist for human rights violations.
What more can you say?
Apple got a taste of their own medicine. From China!
The China Daily article "Copyrights take a bite out of Apple" quotes someone: "The verification must rely on human power." It states that the judge assumed that all service providers should have known the entire text of all bestsellers: "'The writers involved this time include Mai Jia, whose books are often on best-seller lists across the country,' he said. 'In this way, Apple has the capability to know the uploaded books on its online store violated the writer's copyright.'" It appears that China lacks a counterpart to the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), the arguably "good" part of the DMCA, namely a standardized takedown procedure that online service providers can rely on to avoid liability for copyright infringements committed by their users. (A recent ruling against Grooveshark showed that the United States also appears to lack this for pre-1972 sound recordings.)
If it was a Chinese company being sued in America, the bill would've landed on $118 billion.
"I'd say both sides are, in this case."
So where are the authors guild here being hypocritical?
If you're going to whine about how china has so many bootlegs, then Japan is hypocritical (Sony Rootkit abused the copyrights of the ffmpeg team), the USA ignored Charles Dickens' copyrights, Edisons' patents, the UK patents on mechanised looms, etc (and EVERY country has pirates, therefore EVERY country is hypocrites unless they admit and codify that copyrights are invalid).
Did Apple steal other people's ideas, or did someone else defraud Apple by submitting someone else's work to iBooks as his or her own? I'm getting hints from an article in China Daily that it may have been the latter.
That's like blaming Barnes & Nobles if a book they sold violated copyright.
Or like blaming Grooveshark for its users' actions.
Somebody uploaded best-sellers to the store. It is like some john doe uploads the (chinese) Dan Brown books to iTunes, and apple get 30% of all the sales.
Too bad there are so many anti-chinese sentiments here. But this is really a case of chinese seaking part of apple making a boo boo.
Note that in AmericaN law would allow up to $150,000 per infringment, the chise case was for multiple infringements, but the article does not state how much.
Is this April 1? Oh wait , it is a Chinese entity making the claim, so they care. Stealing American/Euro IP and mass producing it if a-ok, just don't do it to them!
...where they write about what the Chinese government is doing to the people who stole the copyrighted materials, presented them as their own, and reaped the other 70% of the proceeds. Same thing as the Amazon/1984 debacle. Apple's only error is (perhaps) in not doing "enough" to keep OTHER people from breaking Chinese copyright laws.
Thought for a second I'd read that headline backwards.
It's likely they acted "In Good Faith" given a perfectly normal submission. There may not be an equivalence for that Western legal term in Chinese law.
If I buy goods in "good faith" that turn out to be illicit, I'm at fault, at the very least I lose my money and the goods.
If my wifi access is hacked and stuff downloaded, I'm at fault.
Merely because torrents CAN be used to commit copyright infringement, torrents are insisted to ALWAYS be infringement.
So doesn't matter, even in Western Law.
At least not if you're rich enough to move and shake.
It's likely they acted "In Good Faith" given a perfectly normal submission.
Many of the companies sued by Apple could also claim to have acted in good faith. Will Apple refund all the time and money they were forced to spend to defend themselves?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
"As someone who's lived in China. they have ZERO respect for IP laws."
Since this entire case is about China respecting IP laws, your assertion is PROVEN wrong.
Does anyone besides me find it ironic that the piracy capital of the world managed to sue a US company? And win?
Of all the places to lose a copyright infringement case as a defendant...how the hell did it happen in China of all places?
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3u3zil/
The judge puts it squarely on Apple's feet.
Then what would the judge have recommended as a best practice to not do it again? How can Apple be sure that the text that an author submits to iBooks is the author's own work? In fact, how can even the author?
So a whopping 730 American Dollars !! That is a lot to them !!
I am guessing Apple couldn't pay right away since a 1,000,000 Yuan note is probably the smallest bill any of their people carry.
bwahahaha - you owe me a keyboard ROFLMAO
As I interpret what the judge said, Apple has the obligation to hire thousands of human reviewers, make all of them read every book that appears on a best-seller list from cover to cover, and then make one of them read each submitted book from cover to cover. An automated system to just buy and scan the best-sellers and search for substrings in submitted books would not catch submitted books that are paraphrases of a best-seller. I don't see how even a company as big as Apple can afford this much effort.
and in other news, the USA chides other countries for human rights violations while we still operate Guantanamo...
Suddenly I find sympathy with Mr. Limbaugh. The blame America crowd isn't wrong, just boring. So many fucked up things going on, like cutting funding for America's most needy, continued opposition to a more fair health care system, righteous insanity blocking background checks for would-be weapon owners, a fucking huge system for oppressing minorities disguised as a war on drungs. And you're worried about Gitmo
America lost it when we invaded Iraq. Over 100k dead for no good reason. Just when the world was starting to forget about Vietnam. The Koran Club of Cuba is a tiny little freakshow compared to the misery we inflict in and out of our borders. Gitmo is a weak-ass talking point and there is no solution for it anyway. Move on
Who are you calling black?!
1. Criticise government
2. Become popular
3. Sue people
4. Government's court sides with you
I see some positive news in there. Apparently, you can be critical of the government, and still have the government support you.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
As I interpret what the judge said, Apple has the obligation to hire thousands of human reviewers, make all of them read every book that appears on a best-seller list from cover to cover, and then make one of them read each submitted book from cover to cover
How could you possibly interpret it that way?
The books Apple are being prosecuted for are best-sellers! This isn't some obscure, hard to find manuscript we're talking about.
So a whopping 730 American Dollars !! That is a lot to them !!
Come on man, the figures and actual currencies are right there in the post; 730 000 Yuan = 180 000 USD.
Juan Won Yuan?
Do they have sweepstakes in China? Who does sweepstakes anymore? Lottery? They got that there? Anyone. Excuse me. Any yuan? Couldn't Apple buy this judge?
The books Apple are being prosecuted for are best-sellers! This isn't some obscure, hard to find manuscript we're talking about.
Apple would still have to check every submission against every best-seller, which means it'd have to buy every best-seller. And Apple would have to do this by hand in case a submission is a paraphrase of a best-seller.
What a load of apologist bollocks!
You are so full of shit it must be dribbling down your chin already.
this whole thing has nothing to do with copyrights, it has to do with china demanding that apple kneel and kiss the ring before doing business in the country. note that apple has decided to do just that - issuing apology letters for warranty stuff, now this, it's all bogus and they know it but they're humoring the communists so they can sell stuff to the people. i would do the same.
is it a crime in china to paraphrase someone else's book? this certainly wouldn't violate copyright here. see weird al for example. everybody says here you can protect implementations but not ideas. to the extent that a written book is the implementation of an idea, what can you do if somebody paraphrases your ideas?
China enforcing copywrite laws? Are you kidding? Since when? Did you pause to consider this might be simply preditory? A large part of China's economy and most of China's military is based on copywrite/patent violations! When China starts enforcing intellectual property rights, it will only mean that it has stolen enough.
Pot please call 1-800-Kettle.
is it a crime in china to paraphrase someone else's book? this certainly wouldn't violate copyright here. see weird al for example.
I don't know about Chinese copyright law, but in general, preparing an unauthorized adaptation violates whatever national statute implements Berne Convention article 12. For another, even if parody falls under fair use, "Weird Al" Yankovic routinely seeks permission.
to the extent that a written book is the implementation of an idea, what can you do if somebody paraphrases your ideas?
The selection and arrangement of ideas is part of implementation, and what constitutes an idea tends to be broader in fiction than in nonfiction.
It's likely they acted "In Good Faith" given a perfectly normal submission.
Many of the companies sued by Apple could also claim to have acted in good faith.
Sure. The company with the most US Design Patents thought there was no law against copying somebody else's design.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Funny how Chinese would pursue copy right violations seeing how they dupe and sell things daily.
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