Traditional Media shall Enhance Themselves against Internet Infringement

toutiao

(By You Yunting) According to news media’s reports, the National Copyright Administration of China (the “NACA”), State Internet Information Office (the “SIIO”), Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (the “MIIT”) and the Ministry of Public Security (the “MPC”) recently initiated the 10th special campaign dubbed “Sword Net Action” against online piracy and infringement, centered on cracking down on some websites’ unauthorized reprint from traditional media. This “Sword Net Action” could be better for traditional media, but governmental action gradually has different stages. Traditional media must improve practicing skills in the legal campaign against new Internet media.

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Could Toutiao.com Achieve a Settlement with Traditional Media?

toutiao

(By You Yunting) Toutiao and its investors would never have thought that a bomb from traditional media would come close on the heels of the Toutiao announcement that it had secured $100 million USD of Series C financing at a valuation of $500 million USD. The Beijing News made a comment “Toutiao.com: Whose headlines are they?” to attack the copyright infringement of Toutiao.com. Afterwards, Toutiao instantly replied, categorically denying infringement. However, just as the trees may wish to be still, the wind doesn’t stop, Toutiao may prefer the criticism to stop, but the traditional media will not subside. Soon, the copyright infringement of Toutiao soon became a public focus, being the subject of a variety of media’s collective enforcement on the grounds of copyright infringement.

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Is It Legitimate for Toutiao.com to Transcode News Websites for Mobile Users?

toutiao

(By You Yunting) According to news, Toutiao, a personalized news app, announced that Toutiao has secured 100 million dollar of Series C financing at a valuation of 500 million dollar. Afterwards, the Beijing News, a traditional paper news, soon posted a comment that Toutiao’s contents are suspected of copyright infringement. However, Toutiao instantly replied in denying infringement. In today’s post, we would like to analyze the infringement issues of Toutiao from the legal prospective.

First is to introduce the push approach of Toutiao. When visiting its official website on a computer, it is found to be relatively regulated, similar with the news channel of Baidu and Google, that every recommended news had an abstract linking to the original website which published the news.

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Chinese Tech Websites Begin to Pay More Attention to the Copyright of Translated Work

By You Yunting

The competition among Chinese tech websites is fierce, and in order to gain an advantage in the battle, many translate essays from American blogs into Chinese and publish them on their websites without permission from the author. Recently, apple4.us, a China-based tech blog, announced they will no longer translate essays without authorization. Furthermore, they will withdraw all past unauthorized translations and ask permission from the authors.

Here is the whole story: Lawrence Li (李如一), an author for apple4.us, translated What Is and Is Not a Technology Company by Alex Payne without authorization and posted it on apple4.us. An editor of Donews, a tech blog under Qianxiang, asked Mr. Li and another apple4.us writer, Hu Wei, for authorization to reproduce the translated essay. Despite never giving confirmation, Mr. Lee later found that Donews had reproduced the essay.

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Is It Lawful for News Websites to Demand Payment of Fees for Google and Baidu Searches

(By You Yunting) According to a report in the New York Times, as also reported by some European websites, Google is recompiling its searched news results as a news page. It may be said that this method could infringe the copyright of the original publishing websites and, as a result, Google should pay fees for the websites. This idea has received support from both the French and German Governments, yet Google believes that its behavior fully conforms to the law, and thus should not have to pay any fees. In China, the main search engines Google and Baidu provide this kind of news search service, and today’s post will discuss whether it is lawful for news websites to claim fees from the search engines.

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