Chinese Website charged with distributing hollywood movies online

Piracy has always been one of the top issues in China, and China is under alots of pressure from the global community to curb piracy and to penalise those who involved in such an act.

The upcoming Beijing Olympics games actually play a huge role on why Chinese government suddenly put such emphasize on this matter.

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (AP) — A Beijing court has ordered the popular Chinese Web portal Sohu.com to pay $140,000 in damages for distributing Hollywood movies online without permission, the movie industry’s trade group said Friday.

A subsidiary of Sohu.com must also publish an acknowledgment of wrongdoing, the Motion Picture Association said.

A Sohu spokeswoman, Zhang Xin, said the company was aware of the ruling but had no comment.

China is regarded as the world’s leading source of illegally copied movies, software and other goods, despite repeated government promises to stamp out the underground industry. The Motion Picture Association blames piracy in China for costing studios in the United States $244 million in lost box office revenues last year.

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