BEIJING, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese police's recent crackdown on the pirated-video platform YYeTs.com is another manifestation of the country's resolve in strengthening the protection of copyright and intellectual property rights (IPRs), a copyright expert said on Thursday.
Zhang Hongbo, director-general of China Written Works Copyright Society, said that operating the platform constitutes a suspected infringement of IPRs and is a criminal offence.
On Wednesday, Chinese police announced the arrest of 14 suspects linked to YYeTs.com after an investigation found that the suspects downloaded videos from foreign pirated-video websites, translated them into Chinese and uploaded the subtitled videos to their servers for dissemination, without the authorization of the copyright owners.
"YYeTs.com was investigated and punished for criminal liability as required by law," said Zhang. "It shows China's determination to enhance copyright protection and increase the cost of infringement."
China has made continuous efforts to clamp down on Internet infringement and piracy. For example, the revised Copyright Law that will take effect in June greatly raises the ceiling for statutory damages from 500,000 yuan (around 75,500 U.S. dollars) to 5 million yuan.
Zhang also called for efforts to bolster the copyright trade to create more licit ways for people to access quality foreign video works and publications. Enditem
