appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

SCMP Reporter

Downloading of  bootleg movies is posing a new threat to intellectual property rights protection  because the  practice is expanding too rapidly for the authorities to combat.

Industry insiders said half of  the mainland's movie piracy takes place on the internet,  and the remainder is on discs.

Movie piracy has become rampant  around the globe thanks to the  use of BitTorrent, a  file-trading network that provides for the  upload and download of copyrighted files of all kinds - enabling millions of users to get instant and illegal access to films.

According to the Motion  Picture Association of America, once a film is transferred to video and uploaded, the file will be downloaded more than 1.7 million times in 48 hours.

In 2005, a worldwide legal precedent was set in Hong Kong when BitTorrent user Chan Nai-ming  was convicted for having created  the 'seed' files for movies that enabled other BitTorrent users to download them. The case is under appeal.

China has the second most  internet users in the world and is poised to overtake the US   next year.

But  mainland authorities are not planning to prosecute peer-to-peer users.  Xu Chao , deputy director of the National Copyright Administration's copyright management office, said at a forum this month that the trend was new and the administration was  watching developments in other countries.



Bootleg  downloads run wild