Tuesday, December 19, 2006

U.S. movie studios win piracy case in China court

BEIJING: Five U.S. movie studios have won a court case against a Beijing shop accused of selling pirated copies of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" and "War of the Worlds" and other titles, the Motion Picture Association said Tuesday.

The Beijing No.2 Intermediate People's Court ruled the Yu Hao Qing DVD store and its parent company, Beijing Century Hai Hong Trading Co. Ltd, were guilty of copyright infringement and ordered them to stop selling pirated moves and pay 164,000 yuan (US$20,100; €15,300) in compensation.

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Monday, December 18, 2006

Microsoft moves to block hybrid Vista

The software maker said on Thursday that the update is aimed at thwarting a technique that was letting some people use pirated versions of the operating system without going through the software's built-in product activation. Microsoft has dubbed the approach "frankenbuild" because it works by combining test versions of Vista with the final code to create a hybrid version.

"Windows Vista will use the new Windows Update client to require only the 'frankenbuild' systems to go through a genuine validation check," Microsoft said on its Windows Genuine Advantage program blog. "These systems will fail that check because we have blocked the [product] keys for systems not authorised to use them."

Although Vista was only released to businesses last month ? and won't hit retail shelves until late January ? it has been making the rounds on the internet, and there have been several reported hacks to bypass its built-in security mechanisms.

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Friday, December 15, 2006

China signs Web piracy deal with U.S. movie group

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Friday agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America and other groups to do more to tackle copyright piracy on the Internet, the official Xinhua news agency said. China's National Copyright Administration said the country would investigate and punish those suspected of online intellectual property abuses by the movie association as well as other groups such as the Association of American Publishers.
The Chinese and foreign sides would also keep in close touch with each other and exchange information, Xinhua said.
The Business Software Alliance and Britain's Publishers Association were two other groups that signed the agreement, it added.
Piracy is one of the trade issues that has poisoned trade relations between China and the United States, and has been a focus of two days of talks in Beijing, led on the U.S. side by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

China announces anti-piracy crackdown

BEIJING

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson confronted mixed signals as he arrived in China Wednesday for trade talks, with Beijing announcing a renewed crackdown on pirated goods but also running up a record trade surplus with the United States.

American officials are trying to downplay expectations of breakthroughs from the talks led by Paulson, Washington's point man on economic ties with Beijing, and Chinese Premier Wu Yi. The talks are billed as the start of a wide-ranging "strategic economic dialogue."

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