China to work with more countries to protect movies

China will cooperate with more countries and regions to crack down on infringement and piracy of movies, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Li Jingsheng, director of the ministry's bureau of security administration, said that the country has arrested 251 suspects and cracked down on 25 movie infringement cases since February. The amount of money involved in the cases totaled 230 million yuan ($34.2 million).

"Infringement and piracy have seriously infringed the interests of movie producers and investors," he said. "It has severely influenced the quality improvement and upgrade of China's movie industry."

During this year's Spring Festival that fell in February, some blockbusters were pirated soon after they were released to the public at movie theaters. Pirated high-definition editions of some hit movies even emerged on the markets three days after they were officially shown to the public.

"The situation drew attention from the country's top leaders, industry insiders and the public as well," said Li. "We formed a task force and effectively curbed film piracy in the country."

So far, the ministry has closed 361 pirated movie and TV program websites, 57 apps and seven projection servers and 14,000 pieces of equipment that were used to pirate HD movies.

According to the copyright monitoring center of Copyright Society of China, all the newly released blockbusters in the country have not been reported to be infringed or pirated after the task force was established.

Yu Cike, director of the copyright management department at the National Copyright Administration, said that the administration will take special actions to protect the copyrights of movies.

"We will strengthen multinational cooperation with more countries and regions to crack down on pirated websites that set their servers overseas," he said.

According to him, the country has also deleted more than 30,000 links to pirated movies that were released during Spring Festival and put 15 movies, including seven imported works, in an early warning protection system.

Network service providers are asked to take effective measures to deal with infringement and piracy in a timely manner to protect the movies in the system.

Wu Jing, a famous movie actor in the latest Chinese science-fiction film The Wandering Earth, said that like his sci-fi blockbuster, many popular movies in China were pirated soon after they were released in the past.

"It seriously damaged the development and the future of China's movie industry," he said. "The creation of a movie is the collaborative work of hundreds or even thousands of people. Not only should the public security department take actions to protect copyright, but also the public should raise their awareness to say no to pirated movies."

Huang Bo, a well-known movie actor in China, said that the fight with movie infringement and piracy has accompanied his whole career.

"Sometimes we feel sad," he said. "It hurts our confidence to create and the interests of investors and industry insiders."

Li said that strengthening the protection of the copyrights is a must-do to implement China's copyright protection system and to improve the competitiveness of the country's movie industry.