Monday January 28, 2008
China pledges crackdown on music piracy
CANNES, France (AP): China said Sunday it is taking steps to crack down on music piracy after a report said that about 99 percent of digital music sales in the country are illegal.
Describing the extent of piracy in China as "grave,'' Zhang Xinjian, deputy director-general of marketing at China's Culture Ministry, told a small group of reporters at the music industry's annual MIDEM conference that his government is seeking to tighten controls on the internet and prosecute offenders.
"The illegal downloading and uploading of music on the Internet has been very detrimental to artists. We feel very sorry about that. This has drawn great attention from the Chinese government,'' he said.
Still, Zhang questioned the accuracy of statistics in the report, released earlier this month by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. He said artists have other sources of income besides record sales - such as revenue from advertising and tour sales - and noted that often salaries in the business are higher than his own.
"We don't really care about how much they earn. What we care more about is that they have to pay tax,'' he said.
His comments were translated from Chinese for reporters.
China has been strongly criticized for its record on Internet piracy, stifling the desire of foreign record labels to cash into a fast growing digital market.
Asia's music market has been growing by 7 percent a year since 2005 as the increase in mobile music offsets a decline in physical distribution, according to figures from PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Chinese entertainment business is forecast to reach $121.5 billion in 2009.
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