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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.
Just a typical corporation then
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.
How is this on Apple? They're a store. Someone _ELSE_ sold a book through Apple that contained material that violated copyrights. Apple didn't produce the book. That's like blaming Barnes & Nobles if a book they sold violated copyright.
Apple haters will be Apple haters, making up bullshit reasons to hate.
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!
Thought for a second I'd read that headline backwards.
Apple are hypocritical thieves, nothing more, nothing less.
The real Hypocrisy is the government and legal system of China. As someone who's lived in China. they have ZERO respect for IP laws. Just downstairs from my apt I had a better selection of western and Chinese pirated DVDs than blockbuster, DVD's of Movies that are still playing in the Cinema. I'd often see the local cops come in to BUY DVDs. This is not some backwards city. This is Shanghai and Shenzhen I'm talking about.
They only reason this law is being enforced is that it's Apple and the government is trying to "send a message". Any Chinese owned store, especially with Communist connections, these violations would be ignored.
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.
"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?
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?
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.
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.
Haha, ok, but what about China? The really funny part here is China fining a US corporation for copyright violation.
Excep that Apple approves every submission and take a bite of every sales. Last I tried, I don't need to get approval emailing a file from my ISP.
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.
The Pirate Bay took responsibility when it decided to publicly flout notices of claimed infringement rather than take down the claimed links. The impression I get here, on the other hand, is that even if Apple does take down infringing books when notified, authors and publishers can still demand damages from Apple for the actions of other users.
You have to get the approval of their buyers to get in their stores and that's quite difficult, in many cases.
Not being an author or iTunes user myself, I'm not familiar with the process to publish on the iBookstore. I do know that Apple takes the first $650 because this page states that one must first buy a recent Mac, not a competitor's computer.
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.
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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