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Chinese Writers Step Up Anti-Piracy Efforts with Apple Lawsuit
By Owen Fletcher
Chinese writers are getting more aggressive about combating piracy of their work.
A Beijing court has accepted a lawsuit filed against Apple by the Zuo Jia Wei Quan Lian Meng, an authors’ group that alleges that hundreds of applications in the U.S. company’s App Store offer unauthorized downloads of books, group spokesman Bei Zhicheng said Tuesday.
The group, whose name translates to the Union for the Protection of the Rights of Writers, represents dozens of Chinese writers and publishers in lodging complaints over copyright violations.
The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court last week accepted the lawsuit, which demands compensation from Apple of 11.9 million yuan ($1.9 million), and covers roughly three dozen books by nine different authors, including well-known writers Han Han and Li Chengpeng, Mr. Bei said.
Calls to the Beijing court went unanswered on Tuesday. But the state-run China Daily cited a court official as saying the court had accepted the lawsuit.
Apple declined to comment. The company’s agreement with developers who list applications in its App Store includes a requirement for those developers not to violate, misappropriate or infringe copyrights. But individual in-app downloads, such as specific books or other files offered through applications, aren’t approved by Apple.
The Chinese writers’ group argues it is Apple’s responsibility in China to prevent pirated content from appearing in the apps. “China’s law says that as long as you receive some of the money, you have to take responsibility for reviewing [items sold in the store],” Mr. Bei said.
Mr. Bei said the group plans a second lawsuit against Apple on behalf of writers not named in the current suit, plus another lawsuit against Chinese search giant Baidu. The group has previously sparred with Baidu over a document-sharing service called Wenku, where users were uploading books without permission.
Baidu declined to comment on the group’s lawsuit threat. The Chinese search engine operator last year took down nearly three million documents on Wenku after writers and publishers complained and said it would shut the service down if it can’t resolve its copyright disagreement with writers.
“China’s government also wants to protect intellectual property rights, but some things about its legislation are relatively lagging, such as compensation amounts being relatively low. So we hope to push forward improvements in legislation using lawsuits,” Mr. Bei said.
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