CHINA INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LAW NEWSLETTER
Vol. 1, No. 14 - November 20, 2000
TOPICS THIS ISSUE:
- Chinabyte, Yesky in Copyright Dispute
- Government Encourages E-commerce in Textile Industry
- Telecom Fees Likely to Drop
- China Claims IT Goal Achieved
- China Deals Blow to VeriSign's Web Domain Service
Chinabyte, Yesky in Copyright Dispute
Chinabyte, a top Chinese IT portal created by the People's Daily and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, has sued another mainland IT portal, Yesky, for copyright infringement.
This case is the first since China enacted new regulations to control news from domestic Internet content providers (ICPs). According to the new regulations, portals are only allowed to disseminate news from domestic media sources pursuant to a signed agreement with that source.
Chinabyte accused Yesky, which claims to be the largest Chinese IT portal in the world, of copying and disseminating content, including news and product information, and is demanding a public apology and 100,000 Renminbi (RMB) in compensation.
The two portals attempted to negotiate an out of court solution to the dispute, but failed to come to an agreement.
(Source: South China Morning Post)
Government Encourages E-commerce in Textile Industry
A senior government official encouraged China's textile industry to adopt e-commerce as a means of preparing itself for stronger competition after China's entry into the World Trade Organization, the Xinhua News Agency reported last Friday.
"The industry urgently needs to tackle the potential that e-commerce has to create international trade opportunities and elevate its profile on the world market," the deputy-director of the State Textile Industry Bureau, Xun Kunyuan, said.
The textile industry is one of the most loosely regulated sectors in the Chinese economy, and has benefited from great international exposure. It exports one-third of its products, and imports considerable raw materials and machinery, mainly from technologically advanced countries, Mr Xun said.
Once a powerhouse of the mainland economy, the labor-intensive textile industry has felt the impact of the restructuring of state-owned enterprises over the past three years.
The government believes that e-commerce can pull the sector out of its downturn and on the road to recovery.
(Source: Xinhua News Agency)
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Telecom Fees Likely to Drop
China's telecom service charges are expected to drop dramatically, and operating licenses will soon be auctioned off, said Liu Cai, director of the Policy and Regulation Department of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).
"A telecom price adjustment will soon be announced and most of the service charges will drop considerably," the director was quoted as saying in Sunday's Business Weekly published by the China Daily.
Mr. Liu said that the Ministry has been working on the adjustment for months. The original plan includes a reduction in the charges on international long distance calls, Internet access fees and mobile phone charges.
He asserted that China would adopt public bidding and auctions for new telecom operating licenses telecom.
"China has the best telecom network but the industry has suffered a backlash of low quality services. Competition is the only treatment to cure the disease," the China Daily reported quoted Liu as saying.
China has attempted to break the monopoly in the telecom industry by forming six basic telecom business operators and 3,000 value-added telecom business companies.
A railway-based China Railway Telecom is soon to be launched as the seventh player in ground communications.
"The government has realized that only a fair, open, competitive environment will nurture the rapid growth of the industry," Liu said.
China promulgated its first telecom regulation in September.
"The regulation clearly shows our commitment to competition," Liu said.
(Sources: People's Daily, China Daily)
China Claims IT Goal Achieved
The Chinese Government reports that it has achieved one of its Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996-2000) goals a year early.
The State Development Planning Commission (SDPC) is currently drawing up the country's first ever "social information" plan for the forthcoming Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001-05), considered a milestone in the country's information industry.
The SDPC is shifting its function from making plans for the IT industry to following the development trends of the market. In the past two years, the commission has researched a wide range of issues, including satellite mobile telecommunications, telecommunications reform, software development strategies, overseas postal systems and new types of computer screens.
The commission has also played a key role in making policies for local mobile telecom regulations, reforming China's telecom industry, developing video compact disc (VCD) products and developing the software industry.
The SDPC is currently looking at policies to protect and encourage e-commerce.
The SDPC has organized many projects to deal with problems which have hampered growth in China's IT industry, including localizing mobile telecom equipment services and developing high-resolution televisions.
To encourage software and integrated circuits development, SDPC plans to promote the export of software products, introduce more venture capital and encourage the building of more software parks.
(Source: China Daily)
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China Deals Blow to VeriSign's Web Domain Service
Beijing recently announced that it would permit only a few mainland companies to assign Chinese-language Internet addresses. The news came as a stunning setback for VeriSign Incorporated, which has developed a Chinese language registration service.
The Ministry of Information Industry (MII) made the announcement on Friday, giving the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) sole authority over registration of Chinese-character domain names.
CNNIC has since named nine domestic companies, and no foreign ones, to carry out registrations.
Earlier this month, VeriSign, through its domain name registration division, Network Solutions, launched a service of registering and managing domain names in Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts. However, CNNIC introduced a competing Chinese-character registration standard the same week.
The two systems are competing to become the standard in the industry. VeriSign's system retains the familiar English-language extensions, like ".com" and ".net". CNNIC's system converts these extensions into Chinese.
The Chinese government's sudden intrusion into the market is certainly not an encouraging sign. This move secures a monopoly for CNNIC, and potentially promulgates an inferior Chinese-language domain registration system merely to insure more profits for a domestic entity. The likely result of this move is that Chinese consumers will be gouged by a monopolist.
(Sources: Reuters, South China Morning Post)
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