In China, battle lines against piracy are being drawn, although they're a 'blurry'

SHOOT: Good luck with that.

clipped from www.economist.com In mid-September the China Internet Video Anti-Piracy Alliance, a group comprising both big Chinese internet portals and foreign rights-owners, including the Motion Picture Association of America, announced a broad legal attack. It said that it had begun collecting evidence against more than 1,000 suspected violators of intellectual property and would start filing lawsuits, with the first target being 503 videos found on Youku, an increasingly popular website, that the alliance claims are pirated. Youku has counter-sued for defamation. The legal assault constitutes an attempt to separate Chinese companies that produce their own content or pay Western ones for imported material, and then charge users from those that often lift it. The division is not entirely clean. Sohu, a leading member of the new alliance, produces its own games and entertainment gossip, which are the mainstays of its business. But it also permits its users to upload files, which can include pirated material.