In the last ten years, the National Copyright Administration together with other authorities dealt with 4,241 cases on online infringement, closed 1,926 illicit websites, confiscated 1,178 servers and devices, fined 7.83 million yuan and transferred 322 cases to judicial departments, according to sources from the workgroup on online copyright protection convened on October 24th.

Yan Xiaohong, Deputy Director of the Administration, said in a statement that China is now facing a grim situation where online rights protection is baffled with the constant emergence of new technologies such as P2P, IPTV, WeChat, micro blogs, media players and top boxes, which enable a large number of unauthorized use of copyrighted contents.

China doesn't have a long history of copyright protection, therefore the protection is still at an initial phase and online rights violations are comparatively rampant, particularly those conducted by some music, literature and video websites, which copy, upload and distribute works without rights owners' permission, greatly hindering the healthy development of industries based on literature, music, films and software.

Yan noted that those facts are attributed to low protection awareness and lucky philosophy held by online lawbreakers. He said, "The whole society should be fully aware of the need to put the market in good order and purify the Internet."

(Source: IPR in China)