Xinhua News Agency interview with Chief Lawyer Xu Xinming: The Chinese piracy animation data published by Japan is unconvincing

Xinhua news agency in Beijing, 29th May 2013 (Reporter: Cheng Di Wang Jianhua) The Chinese animation piracy data published by the Japanese Cultural Department is unconvincing. The  analysts interviewed said that Japan had made speculative assumptions based on unscientific survey methods.

 

Last Friday, the Japanese Cultural Department published online survey results of Japanese anime piracy circulation in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing. Japan accordingly estimated the annual loss in the 4 cities amounted to approximately 34 billion yuan and estimated the annual loss in China amounted to approximately 340 billion yuan, according to factors such as the proportion of internet population.

 

According to a Japan Kyodo News’ report, the Japanese Cultural Department surveyed 1,000 netizens from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chongqing to conduct a questionnaire survey regarding how to obtain and use Japanese anime.

 

Chief Lawyer Xu Xinming, of China Intellectual Property Lawyers Network, expressed that it mainly depended on whether operators were legally authorized to determine whether the conduct constituted infringement or illegal piracy circulation.

 

He said that ordinary netizens couldn’t determine accurately whether operators had been legally authorized, because of the variety of operating modes and the complex market in China. Consequently it was very partial of Japan to base it's survey sample solely on netizens.

 

No information is provided about the question design and questioning approach used in the survey. Moreover, the frequency of netizens’ contact with animation in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chongqing is significantly higher than it is in most other cities in China since these 4 cities are more economically developed areas in China.

    

Professor Zhou Xiaozheng of the Department of Sociology of Renmin University of China, said that the Japanese sample survey was obviously unscientific and incomplete, while the possibility of inducing of its questionnaire design and questioning approach couldn’t be ruled out.

    

According to international practice, evidence of illegal pirated circulation is usually surveyed from manufacturing, communication and sales sectors rather than the end consumers.

 

It will cause data distortion to estimate the piracy losses in the Chinese market according to the proportion of the netizens population, because animation products have their  unique audience of mainly young people and the anime fans are not exactly the same as netizens.

 

Xu Xinming said that the Chinese legal system of intellectual property protection, which includes Copyright Law and Information Network Transmission Right Protection Ordinance etc., was already relatively complete and even advanced in some respects.

[Chines version is available on xinhuanet.com]