Pconline.com.cn - copyright infringement

[Lo Yuk Fai]

It's sad to hear that, but from my limited experience, it's not uncommon in Chinese site to plagiarize contents from all over the world - Including from other Chinese sites, sometimes when I do searches, the same content keep appearing again and again, but from different sites.

Of course, something's commonly done doesn't necessarily make it right or legal. And I wonder whether it will work well by making it public, it seems to me that some Chinese have strong anti-West sentiment and don't care a bit about it (maybe, unless, if they're going to be put in jail...).

There are some good ideas from various people in this thread, I particularly like the one about dealing with the international companies doing advertisements on that website. That may not make them take off the content but at least make them not possible to gain directly from those companies.

Also, you may like to setup a Chinese version of dpreview.com yourself, like Tom's Hardware, but that will require a lot of resources.

If you want them to take off the content, I think you have to deal with lawyers, and since they are on the opposite of the Earth and the fact that copyright is not very well protected in China, you may have to spend a lot of effort in doing so, unless you have good contacts in the Chinese.

Just my 2 cents.

Chinese people actually know all about copyright laws and they do
follow them, but only for Chinese products! Stealing from
foreigners are considered normal and are encouraged...

for one thing, copyrights are not widely enforced in China. Most
of the people do not speak english so emailing them in english is
of no help. I just came back from visiting some relatives in Hong
Kong and China. In both countries you can buy knockoffs and
counterfeit CDs, DVDs and brand name products like Gucci, Polo etc.
Hong Kong is ahead of China in dealing with this, but still has a
long way to go. Corruption in China is very rampant, so it'll take
many years and a major change to the government for things to get
better.

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

--
http://www.fotop.net/loyukfai
http://www.byfai.com/

 

[Lo Yuk Fai]

No doubt copyright is not widely repsected but there is copyright
law and the government is trying, although not to the satisfaction
of ones being violated.

The sense of copyright protection is poorer in China and many Asian countries as compared to the industralized West, it takes time for them to catch up (at least some of them are TRYING...).

I think it's unrealistic to expect them (okay... us... I'm a Chinese afterall : ) to catch up (whether they SHOULD or not is not discussed here...) immediately. So here we have this situation...

And there's the problem of strong differences in living standards between these countries and the industralized West, how could you expect people to pay a year (or more...) worth of salary just to get a copy of Windows?

I'm not trying to say that this make pirating and stealing legal and CORRECT, but that some "local wisdom" (no I'm not an employee for HSBC... : ) is required to sell your products there.

However, for those who are paying US$1000 to get the latest digital cameras and computers but still pirate are just... I don't know how to describe...

Phil's approach is wrong in my opinion. Just emailing the hoster
won't help you far. If you're serious about catching them, go hire
a local lawyer.

Agree.

Just my 2 cents.

--
http://www.fotop.net/loyukfai
http://www.byfai.com/

 

[Lo Yuk Fai]

What you could try doing is implementing a streaming protocol for
stills; I believe that I used Windows Media Services 9 to prevent
ppl from saving audio and video and just view it. print screen
usually doesn't work because of overlay (they get black), so they
would have to resort to frame grabbers. certainly more of a pain
for them and us since we have to open a player. converting each
image into an SWF forces print screening on them too vs using .

There are some "stream capturers" and it will cause a pain for other normal users.

disabling copy functions for text is also possible; you could even

They translated it into Chinese, so I think they couldn't care less about whether the text is copyable or not, to the extreme one can just capture the HTTP transactions directly... There are some really experienced and knowledgeable people in China (but don't care copyright issues at all)...

render all reviews as huge graphics given the fixed width of the
site. again, they can simply retype or use OCR, but it is much
more difficult. it might also have bandwidth costs too, but it
isn't something i wouldn't consider (double neg!).

See above...

you could also issue password protection although that would be an
amazingly difficult task given the number of honest visitors to be
accounted for.

In fact some Taiwan sites like to do that, but they don't seem to be doing this to prevent plagiarism since one can open an account easily and there's always Google Cache. : )

--
http://www.fotop.net/loyukfai
http://www.byfai.com/

 

[Lo Yuk Fai]

Please... Don't... They may not recognize copyright but they do know how to hack/crack, as well... And by doing this will put Phil and dpreview.com into questionable positions... : )

here. (Heh, maybe if you hired a hacker "hitman" to go after their
site or something you might have a chance.) All of the big

--
http://www.fotop.net/loyukfai
http://www.byfai.com/

 

[s4iscool]

amount of pirating, copyright violations, etc The gov turns a blind eye as well.

Phil, I hope there is something you can do to stop these pirates
but please don't let this sorry affair be a springboard for some
people to launch anti any country or culture comments using your
resources...

Read with interest Phil's problem with Pconline.com.cn copyright
infringement. Boy!, this annoys me when I read about
this.......Grrrrr!

Some possible related reading:-
http://home.comcast.net/~min_zhou/copyrightcases.html

Anyway, I've had this before albeit not Chinese sites, and ended up
reporting to the offending ISP/pipe supplier. I'm sure Phil has
looked/tried this, but anyway here's some info I found:-

Pconline.com.cn IP address = 202.96.159.225

Country: CHINA
Looking up 202.96.159.225 at whois.radb.net.
NOTE: More information appears to be available at AS4134.
route: 202.96.128.0/19
descr: Chinanet Guangdong Telecom
origin: AS4134
remarks: this is registered by ruan zhidan
notify: @gddc.com.cn
mnt-by: MAINT-AS4813
changed: @gddc.com.cn 20040419
source: RADB
route: 202.96.128.0/18
descr: China Telecom
origin: AS4134
mnt-by: MAINT-AS4134
changed: @ns.bta.net.cn 19970313
source: SAVVIS

.....more at http://www.dnsstuff.com

Ian.

--
The man who smiles when there is a problem has found someone to blame.

--
John Ellis

--



Trust that little voice in your head that says, 'Wouldn't it be
interesting if....' And then do it. -Duane Michals

amou

 

[ChinaDan]

This really makes me upset!

I have been working in China for 5 years and our company's products have been knocked off left and right (albeit only in form, not in function - that would actually require engineering thinking, something this country is still devoid of).

Your chances of getting them to stop what they are doing are slim IMHO.

Here you can buy DVDs for less than US$1 with full-color sleeve, printing on the disc and a hologram, and that is in a normal shop...actually, I have never seen a real DVD in China.

These a* holes sit in Guangzhou, which is also home to many forgeign embassies and Chambers of Commerce...maybe they can help.

Maybe some clever supporter of your site (which ROCKS) can hack the Chinese site and put them out of business for a while.

Good luck!

 

[carguy84]

Ya, you can run through a proxy, but a proxy is easy enough to detect. The best steps are to store people's IP addresses in a cookie, then after a week or so, ban all IP's coming from China. Set a flag in the cookies that include these IPs then do a check when visitor comes to the site for a banned visitor.

Short of just letting us take down their site with a traffic overload, it's going to have to be a creative solution that will have to be kept up upon and refined I'm sure.

You could just ban all proxies, but AOL users and people behind firewalls might get mad

Another idea would be to use Flash to display the reviews or make the text into a black and white GIF and digitally watermark the new text image. It wouldn't stop some one from having to retype all the information, but at least it would be frustrating as hell.

Just throwing out ideas...

Chip-

--
I'm a 'break-even' photographer.

 

[Alashi]

Phil,

Now that you have made us aware of this, is there anything you'd like us to do? Can your community here have any impact on resolving this issue?

This may sound strange, but what if you also translated to Chinese? Then, there would be no reason for pconline reader to go anywhere else, since this is the source of information sought after?

A goofy though? Perhaps. But, really, what can we do to help???

Alashi

http://www.dpreview.com/misc/advertising.asp#stats

Or block it for a few months if you don't want to shut everyone out
forever. I would think after having their site running with old
content for a while their advertisers would start wondering what
was going on with the impressions.... According to your stats,
less then 2.7%(their exact % is not on the page) of the people
visiting this site are from China, screw them all for not having
national Copyright laws...Maybe that will get them writing to their
officials.

I have a very low regard for people who steal intellectual property
and on that same level, those who tolerate it. If it came down to
it, I'd block out a country in a heart beat since my whole site is
content driven.

Chip-

--
I'm a 'break-even' photographer.

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[Phil Askey]

What and make it EVEN EASIER for them?

No way. If there's no official Chinese version of this site then there can be no Chinese copy anywhere which is sanctioned.

I appreciate your offer for help, if you feel like emailing them and expressing your disgust please be my guest!

Now that you have made us aware of this, is there anything you'd
like us to do? Can your community here have any impact on resolving
this issue?

This may sound strange, but what if you also translated to Chinese?
Then, there would be no reason for pconline reader to go anywhere
else, since this is the source of information sought after?

A goofy though? Perhaps. But, really, what can we do to help???

Alashi

http://www.dpreview.com/misc/advertising.asp#stats

Or block it for a few months if you don't want to shut everyone out
forever. I would think after having their site running with old
content for a while their advertisers would start wondering what
was going on with the impressions.... According to your stats,
less then 2.7%(their exact % is not on the page) of the people
visiting this site are from China, screw them all for not having
national Copyright laws...Maybe that will get them writing to their
officials.

I have a very low regard for people who steal intellectual property
and on that same level, those who tolerate it. If it came down to
it, I'd block out a country in a heart beat since my whole site is
content driven.

Chip-

--
I'm a 'break-even' photographer.

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[Phil Askey]

We would never condone any kind of hacking or attack on their site, I am simply interested in shaming them, opening the discussion, making people aware and maybe just maybe getting some little response out of them.

here. (Heh, maybe if you hired a hacker "hitman" to go after their
site or something you might have a chance.) All of the big

--
http://www.fotop.net/loyukfai
http://www.byfai.com/

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[Ick]

Do they change the Exif information (They don't on my test) so putting the owner & copyright infomation in the Exif could be an invisible protection. I know this is not a solution...

Perhaps there is a way to protect access to DPReview from specific range of IP... It could complexify the task for stealing information.

FRED

We don't want to have to 'uglify' our images as they appear on the
page, however all larger images carry our copyright. The thieves
at pconline simply erase these copyright messages (or crop them
out) before resizing the images and using them on their own pages.

This wouldn't help with them stealing the text, but would make life
a bit harder for them wrt. product shots and samples. Just put a
"Copyright - Phil Askey, DPReview.com - if this photo appears on a
non-dpreview.com website it is in violation of copyright laws".

Claus

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

--

1DMarkII + 10D + 16-35L + 24-70L + 70-200L + 100-400L + 100Macro + 28-135Is + 1.4Ex + 550Ex + Gitzo2227 + UltimateBallHead + 60GB-DigitalAlbum.
See my PSD web Page: http://fhoude34.free.fr/PortableHD.htm

 

[Abram_Lu]

That website IS a chinese website, and I check the content on the homepage of it almost every day.

I am feeling very sorry for hearing that news. Chinese site is the direct mirror of itself before the whole world. It is really a shame for all the Chinese that know this issue and have been into that site.

I appologize for all the violations on any copyright protected or unprotected by laws, which are made by Chinese.

I will support all the efforts that you site would make to protect yourself and prevent the happenning of violations on copyrights.

Very very sorry.
Abram Lu

Read with interest Phil's problem with Pconline.com.cn copyright
infringement. Boy!, this annoys me when I read about
this.......Grrrrr!

Some possible related reading:-
http://home.comcast.net/~min_zhou/copyrightcases.html

Anyway, I've had this before albeit not Chinese sites, and ended up
reporting to the offending ISP/pipe supplier. I'm sure Phil has
looked/tried this, but anyway here's some info I found:-

Pconline.com.cn IP address = 202.96.159.225

Country: CHINA
Looking up 202.96.159.225 at whois.radb.net.
NOTE: More information appears to be available at AS4134.
route: 202.96.128.0/19
descr: Chinanet Guangdong Telecom
origin: AS4134
remarks: this is registered by ruan zhidan
notify: @gddc.com.cn
mnt-by: MAINT-AS4813
changed: @gddc.com.cn 20040419
source: RADB
route: 202.96.128.0/18
descr: China Telecom
origin: AS4134
mnt-by: MAINT-AS4134
changed: @ns.bta.net.cn 19970313
source: SAVVIS

.....more at http://www.dnsstuff.com

Ian.

 

[hidalgo]

No way? Seems to me that you are in part responsible for this problem by not making your site available to Chinese readers. I do not condone copyright violations but where there is a vacuum ....

Seems to me that the site in question would have a lot less trafic if dpreview.com was available in Chinese. Or do you have something against foreign language versions of the site?

H.

No way. If there's no official Chinese version of this site then
there can be no Chinese copy anywhere which is sanctioned.

I appreciate your offer for help, if you feel like emailing them
and expressing your disgust please be my guest!

Now that you have made us aware of this, is there anything you'd
like us to do? Can your community here have any impact on resolving
this issue?

This may sound strange, but what if you also translated to Chinese?
Then, there would be no reason for pconline reader to go anywhere
else, since this is the source of information sought after?

A goofy though? Perhaps. But, really, what can we do to help???

Alashi

http://www.dpreview.com/misc/advertising.asp#stats

Or block it for a few months if you don't want to shut everyone out
forever. I would think after having their site running with old
content for a while their advertisers would start wondering what
was going on with the impressions.... According to your stats,
less then 2.7%(their exact % is not on the page) of the people
visiting this site are from China, screw them all for not having
national Copyright laws...Maybe that will get them writing to their
officials.

I have a very low regard for people who steal intellectual property
and on that same level, those who tolerate it. If it came down to
it, I'd block out a country in a heart beat since my whole site is
content driven.

Chip-

--
I'm a 'break-even' photographer.

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[Kris_K]

Phil,

Why not just place DPREVIEW.COM (translucent) across the face of the images, then at least everyone visiting the site knows they are thieves. I don't think people reading your reviews would be bothered. Can't do that with the image quality/noise shots, but the camera ones could cause them to rethink things.

Kris

 

[Photovalve]

Phil,

Why not just place DPREVIEW.COM (translucent) across the face of
the images, then at least everyone visiting the site knows they are
thieves. I don't think people reading your reviews would be
bothered. Can't do that with the image quality/noise shots, but
the camera ones could cause them to rethink things.

I was going to suggest the same. I am sure it would not spoil the enjoyment or value we get from the images.

 

[David Wong]

and because of these, most people taking advantage of the cheap price in China and making big bucks..many many foreigners come to Guangzhou to buy watches and so on..especially LV bags.

Many HK would cross into China and buy these so call $1 DVD and sell it back on HK market for 3 times the price..The only real DVD I saw in China was HERO (by Jet Li).

So while everyone here is putting China down because copyrights and so on..you can hate China but many people are taking advantage of it, doing business with China and making BIG nice profits..

Speaking of copyright..I wonder what about countries such as India, Russia...If a website in Russia start ripping off DPREVIEW..then I like to see the reaction here..

This really makes me upset!

I have been working in China for 5 years and our company's products
have been knocked off left and right (albeit only in form, not in
function - that would actually require engineering thinking,
something this country is still devoid of).

Your chances of getting them to stop what they are doing are slim
IMHO.

Here you can buy DVDs for less than US$1 with full-color sleeve,
printing on the disc and a hologram, and that is in a normal
shop...actually, I have never seen a real DVD in China.

These a* holes sit in Guangzhou, which is also home to many
forgeign embassies and Chambers of Commerce...maybe they can help.

Maybe some clever supporter of your site (which ROCKS) can hack the
Chinese site and put them out of business for a while.

Good luck!

 

[sakamoto]

Hi everybody,

I'm a long-time reader of dpreview. I found the copyright infringing web most disgusting.

I'm a Chinese, too. I live in Hong Kong. The copyright laws here are far more better. No such thing would happen.

I've found that the Ministry of Public Security of China is responsible for upholding laws related to Internet crimes. Their web-site is listed below:

http://www.mps.gov.cn/default.asp

Unfortunately, their web-site is in Chinese. I hope that you would have friends who know how to read Chinese characters.

Now the China Govt is trying their very best to uphold law and order in the country, which would bring more business opportunities to the country. So, I think it's worth complaining to the authority. I've learnt from the news that a lot of illegal web-site (with sex or illegal downloads) were shut down.

The postage address of the Ministry of Public Security is listed in the web-page below (no e-mail address was posted on the web-site):

http://www.mps.gov.cn/webpage/connectme.asp

I hope that your problem would be solved in the very near future.

Since I can read Chinese and English, please feel free to tell me if I can do any help (for example, translation, etc).

This is a rather bitter-sweet experience. The web-site copies your materials because the materials are good and very worth reading. And because most of the majority of the people in Mainland China do not read English very well. The problem is caused by the education system. So, another way of stopping those copying is to set up a formal Chinese version dpreview site (I know that this may cause a lot of manpower), just like the Tomshardware.com. However, base on the hugh amount of readers in China (as well as Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong), this may well worth doing. Just some suggestions, I'm not familarised with business.

Another suggestion is that you may put large logos in the centre of the photos. I don't mind having such logos in your pictures because what I need is a view on the picture quality of the test cameras. I don't need to use the pictures for other purposes.

Just some crazy thoughts. I don't know if I have do any help.

Best regards,
A long-time supporter of dpreview
Sakamoto

Read with interest Phil's problem with Pconline.com.cn copyright
infringement. Boy!, this annoys me when I read about
this.......Grrrrr!

Some possible related reading:-
http://home.comcast.net/~min_zhou/copyrightcases.html

Anyway, I've had this before albeit not Chinese sites, and ended up
reporting to the offending ISP/pipe supplier. I'm sure Phil has
looked/tried this, but anyway here's some info I found:-

Pconline.com.cn IP address = 202.96.159.225

Country: CHINA
Looking up 202.96.159.225 at whois.radb.net.
NOTE: More information appears to be available at AS4134.
route: 202.96.128.0/19
descr: Chinanet Guangdong Telecom
origin: AS4134
remarks: this is registered by ruan zhidan
notify: @gddc.com.cn
mnt-by: MAINT-AS4813
changed: @gddc.com.cn 20040419
source: RADB
route: 202.96.128.0/18
descr: China Telecom
origin: AS4134
mnt-by: MAINT-AS4134
changed: @ns.bta.net.cn 19970313
source: SAVVIS

.....more at http://www.dnsstuff.com

Ian.

 

[carguy84]

I'm sure Phil and his team has enough to keep them busy without having to translate their site into foreign languages. Phil is not the one at fault here, it's pconline. Why should he have to make more work for himself because some other site wants to steal his content?!? Already doing the translation is just going to create one less step in the thieves process.

PCOnline is the one that needs to change their ways.

 

[Dennis Lathem49692]

No way? Seems to me that you are in part responsible for this
problem by not making your site available to Chinese readers. I do
not condone copyright violations but where there is a vacuum ....

.....and the young lady that is raped is responsbile because she did not attend to the sexual needs of the person who raped her.

You are out of your mind!

--
CDL

See Profile for gear stuff
Pbase Supporter

 

[Alashi]

ouch...that's a little chilly, but it reiterates the point I was trying to make; that is, if you can get what you need and more here, then why go elsewhere? However, since all the sponsoring sites to which dpreview has links are not in Chinese, that could indeed pose a problem. But even some loss of their readership in favor of dpreview might not be a bad idea anyway.

The only other thing I could think of is rolling links so that if they did link to anything here (which they probably don't), the link would not remain valid for more than a day/week or month. It wouldn't affect us though. I realize what a pain to do that is however.

I will write to them of my displeasure, and I guess that's about all I can do for now.

Thanks Phil and H!

Alashi

Seems to me that the site in question would have a lot less trafic
if dpreview.com was available in Chinese. Or do you have something
against foreign language versions of the site?

H.

No way. If there's no official Chinese version of this site then
there can be no Chinese copy anywhere which is sanctioned.

I appreciate your offer for help, if you feel like emailing them
and expressing your disgust please be my guest!

Now that you have made us aware of this, is there anything you'd
like us to do? Can your community here have any impact on resolving
this issue?

This may sound strange, but what if you also translated to Chinese?
Then, there would be no reason for pconline reader to go anywhere
else, since this is the source of information sought after?

A goofy though? Perhaps. But, really, what can we do to help???

Alashi

http://www.dpreview.com/misc/advertising.asp#stats

Or block it for a few months if you don't want to shut everyone out
forever. I would think after having their site running with old
content for a while their advertisers would start wondering what
was going on with the impressions.... According to your stats,
less then 2.7%(their exact % is not on the page) of the people
visiting this site are from China, screw them all for not having
national Copyright laws...Maybe that will get them writing to their
officials.

I have a very low regard for people who steal intellectual property
and on that same level, those who tolerate it. If it came down to
it, I'd block out a country in a heart beat since my whole site is
content driven.

Chip-

--
I'm a 'break-even' photographer.

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com