Conference tackles online music piracy

Stakeholders gathered in Beijing for the eighth China Copyright Annual Conference on Friday, to tackle online music infringement and promote copyright protection in the Internet era. 

"China's digital music market has great potential. On one hand, the rapid development and widespread application of Internet technology has reshaped the landscape of the music industry and changed its business model. On the other hand, the creativity and communication of the music industry have been boosted greatly because of the new technology," said Qi Xuchun, vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, China's top political advisory body.
Nearly 500 professionals including Internet tycoon Lei Jun and composer Gao Xiaosong attended the annual conference, held by the Copyright Society of China. 

The change will lead to opportunities but also bring challenges, Qi said, adding that digital music piracy has become easier, and it is difficult to detect in the Internet era. 

Data showed that the revenue of the global digital music business exceeded that of traditional music in 2014 for the first time, said Lu Yimin, chief executive officer of China Unicom. 

With the development of technology, a large number of users enjoy music on their mobile phones, Lu added. 

However, Lu said challenges remain regarding copyright protection. 

The revenue from China's music copyrights is about 10 percent of the industry's profit. But in developed countries such as in Europe and the United States, copyright profit accounts for about 60 to 70 percent of the total revenue, Lu said. 

When digital music products were introduced to China, the market was chaotic, said Ang Kwee Tiang, Asia regional director of International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, adding that pirated products filled the Internet at the time. 

"Even now, our federation released nearly 70,000 notices as we examined 500 websites from January to November. But China has more than 500 websites. When we look at the number, we can see infringement is still a serious problem in China," Ang said. 

A notice was issued when an infringed work was detected. 

According to the latest World Intellectual Property Report, released by the World Intellectual Property Organization last week, music market revenue has reached $14.9 billion, up 80 times from 2004, said Wang Binying, WIPO deputy director-general.