“We were seeing progress over a number of years … but that has essentially stalled and the (piracy) rate has been roughly flat for the last three years,” said President Robert Holleyman of the Business Software Alliance.

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe, Carl Bass of Autodesk and Enrique Salem of Symantec are among the chief executives meeting with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Attorney General Eric Holder, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.

Microsoft, which has continued doing business with China despite the piracy, recently won a lawsuit in Shanghai against a local insurance company that was running 450 copies of pirated Microsoft software.

The BSA is asking the Chinese government to ensure that government offices and businesses use only licensed software and to pledge to refrain from compelling intellectual property transfers as the cost of doing business, in addition to other steps.

Source : Konaxis

Meanwhile, Zhang He said it would generate greater values to allow the video sites medialized.

Starting form this year, online video copyright increasingly caused more concerns. Zhang He revealed that at present the cost of video websites to buy television series was 10000-20000 yuan per episode, while in last year the average cost was about 4000-5000 yuan, but the recent purchased TV series reached 40,000 yuan level.

Concerning the purchasing price increase trend, Zhang He believed no need to worry too much, the market could naturally adjust to the overall industry. About the mentioned 40,000 yuan TV series, Zhang He said it would generate profits from copyright distribution, cooperations with operators, as well as 3G and advertising.

Turning to anti-piracy issue, Zhang He said that pirated video site hurt very much the development of the industry, legal action is excitement nets’ last resort. At the same time Zhang He said that the copyright issues in video industry is too difficult to resolve, “have no much confidence in self-innovation of the industry”.

Besides, Zhang He also said to Sina science and technology that, through the anti-piracy practices to expand the market share is not a true awakening, but playing the “muddy the waters” in the industry. What worried Zhang He most was after the current wave of fighting against Internet piracy video passed, the industry’s piracy would continue to develop.

“Video sharing is a very narrow thing, all people should not all go this way” in the eyes of Zhang the online video industry still has many left blanks. He believes that there are a lot of space in genuine video sites expanding the way to survive. “to medialized the video sites is more valuable” Zhang He cited an example.

The remarks came as Bestseller Fashion Group announced it would open a flagship store for its popular Danish clothing brand Jack & Jones on Taobao, which is owned by Alibaba Group.

Taobao lets users sell items at auction or in online retail stores. It reported a transaction volume equivalent to US$11.8 billion in the first half of this year, nearly twice the volume from one year earlier.

Taobao has closed hundreds of member shops for selling knock-off items this year, a step up in enforcement from the past, said Liu Ning, an analyst at Beijing research company BDA.

Taobao chief financial officer Daniel Zhang has said the company aims to expand abroad in the long term but that it is currently focused on introducing more foreign brands to its China platform. A group of Alibaba Group senior executives visited the U.S. earlier this year to discuss potential partnerships with companies including eBay, Google and Amazon.com.

Source : Konaxis