Apple loses again in Chinese App Store copyright case Apple has lost another copyright case in China after it was held responsible for content third parties uploaded to the bookish corner of its App Store. The company was ordered to pay three Chinese writers more than 730,000 yuan (£76,600) in compensation after allowing their content to be uploaded and sold on the App Store …
That only works so long as China get the balance right. If they decide to kick the big US corporates too much, or the Japanese for a particular example, then their economy might become a lot less shiny suddenly.
The reason big companies have power isn't because they're evil, greedy or politicians are stupid or corrupt. Though all of those things may or may not be true... The reason is that they have something that governments want. They create value, jobs and shinies that people want.
Russia has a powerful and rich government. But its economy is still massively biased towards mining and petrochemicals because the government have fleeced (or allowed to be fleeced) a few too many Western (and local) corporations - who now are wary of investing into their economy. It's an example China need to be wary of. There's nothing wrong with beating up on companies for breaking the law, as long as it's broadly done to foreign and domestic firms alike, and isn't too arbitrary.
Insightful !sparticus.
It is actions like these that cause China to lose respect in the world community. The world is flat? Its ironic that Globalism has been very good to china, yet when the information and legal systems in China are so biased, its apparent that the world is not so flat... that the business playing field in China is decidedly warped, and how can you respect that.
The right decision, sure this is just peanuts to Apple, but the precedent, that is key!
Apple is now liable in China for copyright violations by people selling books on its store, a good thing IMHO, then maybe they will spend a bit of their massive cut on vetting books to ensure the author/publisher actually published them!
If the Apple Store was a free-for-all (as in, anyone could put anything up for sale/download), then Apple could mount a decent defence.
However, Apple repeatedly pushes their terms and conditions onto developers - including the fact that they supposedly check the apps for breaches of said terms and conditions. As such, Apple is now responsible for the legality of the items being sold on its Apps Store, having supposedly "checked" and "approved" them before they were allowed to be displayed.
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