According to information released on March 21, recently, the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China has purged a great many of online music materials after its cracking down upon 237 illegal music websites, aiming at promoting intellectual property rights (IPR) in culture markets, combating copyright infringements and protecting IPR for online music.

Taking legal actions against music websites for overdue rectification

In January 2011, the Ministry of Culture issued a circular, requiring all websites to delete the first batch of 100 illegal online music products. Recently, it organized to investigate relevant websites and found that some of them still provided illegal music materials for users to download and listen to. Therefore, on March 17, the Ministry of Culture issued a notice on investigating the eleventh batch of illegal online culture activities and urged relevant provincial cultural administrative departments and cultural market comprehensive enforcement organs to take legal actions against 54 websites who provided illegal online music materials, such as 2688ring.com.

Launching the investigation on the second batch of 100 illegal online music products

On March 17, the Ministry of Culture launched a notice on weeding out the second batch of 100 illegal online music products and urged relevant search engines and websites to  delete illegal online music products before April 30. Websites that do not rectify the errors themselves on time will be imposed penalties in accordance with the law.

Investigation on the 237 illegal music websites coming to an end

At the end of 2010, the Ministry of Culture investigated 237 music websites taking up illegal business activities, such as yysky, 123wma and 9Ku. It urged these websites to rectify the errors before deadline and stop illegal business activities at once. In February 2011, the Ministry released a notice, requiring culture market comprehensive enforcement organs at all levels to investigate websites still doing illegal business. Recently, cultural administrative departments at all levels have been investigating those illegal websites and cooperating with communications management departments to shut them down.

Officials from the Ministry of Culture indicated that, in the next stage, the Ministry planned to launch a blacklist of illegal culture products, supervise major cases, urge all regions to combat copyright infringements and piracy to protect intellectual property rights and purify online culture markets. It also encouraged the public to expose illegal online music products and websites via hotline 12318.

(Source:IPR in China)