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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
...North Korean court fines Canadian tourist for human rights violations.
Maybe it's got more to do with sticking it to an American company. American companies don't usually have much luck in CHina regarding copyright claims.
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.
My guess is that it is a ploy by the Chineese government to force the works to be removed from the App Store.
If they requested directly to have the works removed they would get denied, but if they claim infringement towards the author they can get traction.
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.)
It could also be seen as them trying to reduce the spread of these writers works.
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.
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.
Apple is not local to China.
Just because something was made in CHina, does not mean it was not done for a foreign company.
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?
"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.
No, there's a difference between using IP laws when it's to your advantage, and actually "respecting" them.
No.
In China, just being a foreign corporation (especially US) is enough to have the law be used against you at times it would not be used against domestic companies.
Yup.
Much of China's economy has been built on that concept, and also the idea of working with foreign corporations only long enough to learn their trade secrets and manufacturing techniques - once there is nothing more to learn, it is common for the Chinese companies to stop doing any business with their foreign partner.
Of course, combine this with short-sighted American CEO's concerned only with quarterly profit, and China wins every time.