Japanese anime suffers huge loses in China: untruthfully

Such hot topics as “Japanese anime suffers an annual loss of 230 billion yuan in China due to piracy”, “Music downloading on the Internet will be fully charged” and “The third party platform on Amazon sells pirated books” arose intense reaction after reported by media, to which Yu Cike from the National Copyright Administration of China(NCAC) made respective response.
 
As reported by the media, the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan released the results of an online survey conducted in China, which was targeted at Japanese anime products, saying Japan annually lost 3,800 billion yen (230 billion yuan) because of piracy. Yu Cike said the results were unconvincing. On one hand, a survey on piracy would usually take into consideration of manufacturing, distribution, sales, use and other factors according to international practice, rather than only end-users. On the other, the survey conducted among netizens was one-sided. In addition, the selected four cities were developed area with relatively higher degree of use of animation when compared with other cities in China, said Yu. In sum, the online survey method and the “point to an area” approach would lead to an overestimation of relevant data, said Yu.

As to “music downloads on the Internet will be fully charged from this month”, Yu said whether and how music downloads were charged should be left to right holders and network operators to decide. But no matter what kind of business model it would be, network operators should use music with permission of right holders and pay them according to the Copyright Law. The NCAC supported protection and legitimate dissemination of original music. In recent years, pirated music has always been the key area of governance.

With regard to Amazon, Yu said the NCAC made immediate investigation as soon as it got informed of the news. It has ordered Amazon to carry out rectification and levied administrative sanctions as well. Meanwhile, units suspected of publishing pirated books should be referred to local copyright enforcement departments for initial settlement. Amazon is making positive changes as required by the NCAC. [Chinese version is available on chinaxwcb.com]