Institute for Internet Policy & Law @ Beijing Normal University

2006 has gone but the scandals are left.

http://finance.jrj.com.cn/news/2007-01-25/000001949845.html

In recent year, a couple of cases were brought to the court regarding stealing the visual property (such as weapons, helmets) generated from the visual games or created in the visual communities. It is difficult to draw a line between the so-called visual property and the other intangible property, but misappropriation of the visual property is hardly an intellectual property infringement.

The most popular instant message system “QQ” (whose logo is two cute penguins) is suing a large online auction site “Tao Bao” (looking for your fortune) for infringing copyright by allowing the users to sell QQ numbers and Q currency on its platform. Meanwhile, Tao Bao brought a non-infringement suit in another court against QQ. QQ (previously called OICQ) was developed initially as the Chinese version of the ICQ.
http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2007-01-15/06461334645.shtml

Visual crimes are drawing people’s attention.

http://it.sohu.com/20070612/n250514560.shtml

The telecom standard for the third-generation has always been a highly controversial. After the MII determines to adopt the Chinese-enterprise developed TD-sCDMA standard, instead of the other two foreign-controlled standards, the scholars criticize the decision for 3G is as useless as the skill to kill the dragons that do not actually exist. The telecom monopoly has always been able to capitalize on its monopoly physical network. A new 3-G network will repeat the history. In order to stimulate competition, telecom industry should be as open as the computer industry. Instead of maintaining the telecom monopoly by issuing a few 3G licenses, the government should encourage and support the bottom-up Internet based wireless broadband network, which is the direction of 4G.

http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2007-01-11/14211330785.shtml

http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2006-05-10/1251931126.shtml

http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2007-04-04/02131447419.shtml

A fix-line operator–Netcom–has joined the debate. A wifi-city model may emerge.

http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2007-06-08/01141551827.shtml

Six cities have joined the new wireless initiative using WiMax technologies. But competition regulation, license issuance and frequency allocation are plaguing the development.

http://tech.sina.com.cn/t/2007-09-18/05491745158.shtml

If an service provider naively believes that it can avoid the regulation of the physical world by merely operating in visual reality, the undersea fiber-optic cable cut-off by a strong earthquake near Southern Taiwan Ocean proves their miscalculation. The cut-off nearly paralyzes or significantly slows down the Internet and telecom communications between Mainland, TW, HK, MO, South East Asia and USA. Interestingly, a Chinese officially media vehemently reported that those service providers (Yahoo! MSN) that deliberately place all their servers outside China to shield from Chinese regulation are hit most seriously in this accident, while the foreign services that have at least one local server (Google) may maintain normal operation. This accident also prove that visual localization may be a good commercial tactic, because the websites under the China’s country-code domain (CN) are not affected, though many sites under gTLDs suffer.

http://www.forbes.com/markets/economy/2006/12/27/internet-china-cables-markets-emerge-cx_vk_1227markets02.html

http://news.sohu.com/20061228/n247305391.shtml

In Chinese, a computer chip are often analogized as the “heart” of the computer. The analogy partially comes from the old ad. of Intel for Pentium–“Give your computer a Robust Heart (the Chinese transliteration for “Pentium” roughly means robust)”.

In January 2006, a technological scandal was reveal by a mysterious figure named “Deep Throat” that a star professor Chen Jin in Shanghai Jiaotong University fabricated a “Han Chip” (Chinese Heart) project and obtains billions of fund from the government. Those chips that were claimed to be independently developed by Chen were actually Motorola chips with trademark wiped off. http://info.china.alibaba.com/news/detail/v5000441-d5688591.html ; http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/31/business/chinet.php

In a sharp contrast, the chips that are really developed by Chinese enterprises–“Loongson” (Dragon Heart) are going to be exported to France and Italy. http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2006-12-26/02031305932.shtml