Authorities step up their efforts to knock back film piracy

Legal specialists welcomed China’s increasing efforts to fight movie piracy after the issue was highlighted as a priority of the country’s top copyright watchdog this year.

The National Copyright Administration pledged on Monday that it would ramp up the fight against people privately recording films in theaters and strictly inspect online platforms that sell or spread pirated works.

The fight would be a joint effort of the China Film Administration, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, while inspections would focus on websites, smartphone applications, WeChat accounts and e-commerce platforms.

“If we find serious piracy, we’ll transfer the cases to public security departments to be dealt with as criminal matters,” the copyright authority said.

It was determined to combat piracy in the film industry, as it found several popular movies shown in cinemas — including

which is now ranked second in the country’s alltime box office — had been pirated during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, which ended on Feb 10.