Administrative Protection of Internet Copyright in China

By Singer John Huang, EAST IP, Beijing

The Administrative Protection of Copyright on the Internet Procedures (Procedures), jointly issued by the National Copyright Administration and the Ministry of Information Industry, came into effect on May 30 2005. These Procedures are China's first administrative rules governing dissemination of copyrighted materials over the internet.

The rapid development of the internet has brought tremendous challenges to traditional copyright protection systems. For example, the birth of powerful search engines and the spread of peer-to-peer (P2P) music and movie downloads have made it difficult for copyright owners to enforce their rights against individual infringers. Therefore, copyright owners usually try to enforce against internet service providers (ISPs) and internet content providers (ICPs). In the recent Grokster decision made by the US Supreme Court on June 27 2005, the copyright owner (MGM) went a step further in winning the case against tech companies whose software product enabled and encouraged their customers to download copyrighted materials.