(LI SHIGONG)

On March 31, China's National Copyright Administration (NCA) posted an announcement on its official website asking for views from the public on the draft amendment of the Copyright Law. China's Copyright Law, which came into effect in 1990, was amended twice before—in 2001 and 2010 respectively. The current revision is the third amendment.

Some articles in the current draft amendment, such as articles 46 and 48, have attracted the most attention from the public, especially the music industry, because they involve unauthorized use of copyrighted material. Under the draft law, some governmental organizations would be responsible for authorizing use of copyrighted works.

Musicians are concerned that they would lose control of their own material. According to Article 46, a taped work can be used by other music producers three months after the work has been publicly released without the permission of the creators, abiding by Article 48 of the law, which stipulates that users of the work must pay a fee to a copyright management organization one month after they start using them and the organization will transfer the fee to copyright owners in time.

According to article 68, Internet companies who provide search, storage or linkage service are obliged to verify whether the material they provide is copyrighted. Although this article also stipulates that Internet service providers is obligated to delete the material if they are told to do so by copyright owners, and if not, they will have to be accountable, musicians are still worried that this article is opening the door to copyright infringement.

Opponents

Liu Siqi (Beijing Daily): Article 68 is obviously in favor of Internet enterprises. In the past, Internet companies felt a bit worried when they provided illegal online music downloads, but if relevant regulations in the draft amendment are officially implemented, these companies even don't need to find any excuses. The biggest problem is, China's emerging digital music industry might be hurt terribly. Digital music is the future and hope of the music industry, and the precondition for healthy development of this industry is effective copyright protection.

Shen Yongge (Beijing Daily): In 2009, the digital music sector harvested 20 billion yuan ($3.17 billion) from the ring tone business alone. Since then the profit of digital music has been even higher. But the income of copyright owners, including lyric writers, composers and copyright-owning organizations, is less than 1 percent of the profit. This means most musical works do not bring any profit to the original creators.