AS Chinese writers become increasingly vocal about the unauthorized distribution of their work, Apple has become the latest company to be pulled into the fray.

    Zuojia Weiquan Lianmeng, which translates to the Union for the Protection of the Rights of Writers, a group representing dozens of writers and publishers who joined together to lodge complaints about copyright violations, says that hundreds of applications found in Apple’s App Store are offering unauthorized downloads of 23 books.

    Bei Zhicheng, the group’s spokesman, said their complaints to the Cuptertino, California-based company got feedback this week. Apple contacted the group and promised to send representatives to explain the APP Store policy and listen to the association’s suggestion and requirements, Bei told Chinese media yesterday.

    Their complaints follow a showdown between the same group and Chinese search giant Baidu over a document-sharing service called Wenku, where users were uploading books without permission.

    The group is led by a board of directors composed of five authors and five publishers, and has set up a 3-million-yuan (US$464,000) fund with donations from Bei, who is also the CEO of Beijing Tomorrow Hi-tech Software Co., and two other executives.

    Bei said that he and the two other donors — Li Guoqing, CEO of e-commerce Web site Dangdang, and Liu Qiangdong, CEO of Jingdong Century Trading, which operates 360buy.com — each contributed 1 million yuan. The three won’t be on the board, nor will they receive any returns on their donations, Bei said.

    The fund will be used to sue Apple, Baidu and other alleged Internet copyright violators over the next two years, Bei said, though no lawsuits have been filed yet. He said the group is in the process of sending takedown notices to the companies and collecting evidence of the alleged copyright violations, adding that 20 percent of any money awarded by the courts or through settlements will go back to the fund for future lawsuits, and 80 percent will be returned to the writers and publishers whose copyrights were violated.

    When asked why the group is targeting Apple rather than the application developers, Bei said the group believes Apple should more strictly enforce its copyright policies on Chinese developers because global copyright enforcement tactics don’t work in China. In China, Internet service providers “had to adopt stricter policies” than their U.S. counterparts, he said, pointing to piracy initiatives of Chinese Web sites Youku and Tudou, which resulted in the deleting of many copyright-infringing videos uploaded by users. “In China, copyright policies should be more strict,” he said.

    Baidu, which in March took down nearly 3 million documents on Wenku after writers and publishers complained, has said it will shut the service down if it can’t resolve its copyright disagreement with writers. Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo said the company still stands by this promise, and that “Baidu is still eager to find an amicable way forward. We believe we made a good faith effort to address the concerns expressed by writers and publishers in March and will continue to do our utmost to make sure that infringing content uploaded by users is removed promptly.”

    The company has made changes to its site since meeting with writers earlier this year, including highlighting on its site a message in red type warning users not to upload unauthorized documents, and sets size limits and identification technology to try to prevent infringing-content uploads.

    The writers group says many infringing works can still be found on Wenku, but that it is more offended by the alleged appearance of unauthorized works in Apple’s App Store because Apple may be earning some revenue from the applications, and that users of the App Store tend to be white-collar professionals who can otherwise afford authorized versions of the books they are downloading.

    Google, which has also come under fire in China for its controversial book search service, is facing a lawsuit from Shanghai-based novelist Mian Mian, for the scanning and publishing of part of her novel “Acid Lover” without her permission. The author, who is suing for about US$60,000 and an apology, said Google’s practice of digitizing books, even parts of books, without giving her a choice over whether to be included and over what keywords should be applied to her work, is a violation of her rights. Such practices, regardless of how much writers are compensated, she says, have a negative impact on the literary community because they disregard the wishes of content creators.

    A court hearing is scheduled for next March.

    Google says that its intention for Google Books is to improve search results, enabling users to find books related to their searches, and to revive difficult-to-find and out-of- print titles. “We work with over 40,000 publishers and 40 libraries across the world to make these books searchable and discoverable online,” a Google spokeswoman said. “Google Books promotes and encourages book sales — helping to ensure that authors and publishers are rewarded for their creative efforts.”

    The spokeswoman added that the company honors authors’ wishes, and moved to quickly exclude Mian Mian’s book from the service so that “no portion is available to users on Google Books.”

    (SD-Agencies)