Copyright of online news, movies, TV shows to be enforced 'severely'

The latest national campaign to protect intellectual property rights will focus on online movies, TV shows and news articles, the top copyright watchdog said on Tuesday.

"To protect the copyright of movies, TV series and news stories online, the battle will severely strike websites and other platforms, such as cloud storage and social media platforms, that spread unauthorized works," said Yu Cike, director of copyright management for the National Copyright Administration.

"It will also target websites, mobile apps and WeChat accounts that publish, repost and spread news articles without authorization."

In an era in which more people are active online through social media and blogs, news has often been taken and published without authorization, said Sun Yuxia, head of information copyright protection at Xinhua News Agency.

She added that news articles from traditional news agencies are easily transferred to personal blogs and social media feeds without giving credit.

She applauded the effort to tackle infringements of news copyrights and to improve the online copyright environment generally.

The campaign will also target app stores and app providers that spread works without authorization.

E-commerce platforms will be strictly supervised, banning pirated books, video works and electronic publications online.

The annual campaign began in 2005 and called Sword at the Internet, aims to tackle online copyright infringement and targets music, movies, literature, games, e-commerce and software.

It is expected to last four months.