Hollywood wins copyright suit in China http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-12-29T104759Z_01_SHA147958_RTRUKOC_0_US-SOHU-COPYRIGHT-CHINA.xml
Fri Dec 29, 2006
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Hollywood movie studios have won a lawsuit in China over the posting of movie clips on the Internet, the Motion Picture Association said on Friday.
A unit of Sohu.com Inc., which runs some of China's most popular Web portals, lost a suit over copyright infringement after it posted digital files of motion pictures for downloading, the group said in a statement. The Beijing First Intermediate People's Court ordered Beijing Sohu Internet Information Service Co. Ltd. to pay damages and costs of 1.1 million yuan ($139,000), the group said.
A Sohu.com spokesman in Beijing, contacted by telephone, denied knowledge of the litigation, and officials at the Beijing court were not available for comment. But Chinese official newspapers also reported the court judgment.
Movie titles involved in the suit included Lord of the Rings, Dawn of the Dead and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the movie group said. The group estimates that major global movie studios including Twentieth Century Fox -- a unit of News Corp. -- and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Pictures lost about $2.3 billion to Internet piracy in 2005,.
($1=7.804 Yuan)
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