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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."
...North Korean court fines Canadian tourist for human rights violations.
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.
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.
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.