Traditional, Dotcom Media in Court War Over InfringementTraditional media, mainly newspapers and magazines, angered by frequent infringement of copyrighted material by dot-coms, are waging a legal war against their newborn but thriving competitors."Why do these network media steal others' articles while spending so heavily on building up their own image?" asked Cheng Chibing, editor-in-chief of the Life Info magazine, at a news conference in Beijing Wednesday. The briefing was hosted by the magazine to expose a lawsuit against a well-known dot-com company, Chinaren.com, run by the Beijing Shaling Information Technology Company, which is charged with heisting 36 articles and 13 photographs from the magazine without its approval. The Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court will hear the case, according to Cheng. This case isn't the first and it won't be the last: Traditional media outlets have sent warnings to their ambitious young competitors in various forms. Some new media companies are taking into account the issue of intellectual property rights, but many others still ignore the legal and ethical implications of stealing original material. The district court of Haidian in western Beijing, home of China's "Silicon Valley" Zhongguancun, has more copyright infringement cases on its docket than any court in the country. Last year, the court handled 17 IPR cases. |
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