Cafe in court over TV on the Internet

A Shanghai Internet cafe has been taken to the court for infringing the copyright of two Hong Kong TV series by allowing people to watch them on its local area network.

Beijing Netmovie asked for 150,000 yuan (US$21,269) in compensation at yesterday's hearing in the Yangpu District People's Court.

The TV series involved include "War and Beauty" and "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils."

The copyright owner, Television Broadcasts, had given Beijing Netmovie transmission rights for the two TV series in 2006.

However, a lawyer for Netmovie told the court the company found that Shanghai Mengchao Internet Cafe was offering the TV series without permission.

"Anyone who paid for using the computers in the Internet cafe can watch the TV," the lawyer said. "We found 30 and 45 chapters of the two TV series available."

The lawyer for the cafe told the court: "As an Internet cafe, we only offered a place for people to surf online and charged money for that, not for the movies. Netizens in our cafe will open certain Web pages to watch the series online."

He said the Internet cafe had not downloaded the TV series or broadcast it to its clients.

According to the law, those who duplicate, broadcast or spread the works without the permission of copyright owners are regarded as guilty of copyright infringement, the lawyer for Netmovie argued.

Beijing Netmovie has filed more than 100 suits involving Internet cafes all over the country, court officials said.

All were accused of offering movies or TV series without its permission.