TechLuver.com

Feb 05, `08 — Three global record companies, Universal Music Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Hong Kong) Ltd and Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd, have launched legal proceedings against China’s top Internet search engine Baidu.com, accusing it of violating copyright by giving access to music files, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in a press release on Monday, Feb 04.

* New legal proceedings brought against Baidu
* Copyright infringement actions against Sohu and its associate company Sogou
* Yahoo China in breach of copyright violation judgment

After months of fruitless negotiations, legal proceedings have been filed on Feb 04, against the China’s biggest internet company, Baidu. Separate actions have also been brought against Sohu and its associate company Sogou. Meanwhile, Yahoo China faces fresh proceedings following its refusal to comply with a landmark ruling in December confirming it violated Chinese law by committing mass copyright infringement.

All of the Chinese companies involved operate similar services based on delivering music to their users via “deep links” to hundreds of thousands of infringing tracks on third party sites, with the aim of driving their own advertising revenue. Such services have been confirmed as in breach of copyright by the December judgment of the Beijing Higher People’s Court. Each of them is a driver of copyright abuse in China, where the huge potential for the online music sector is being stymied by copyright theft.

China has potentially the largest online music-buying public in the world with as many broadband connections as the United States. Currently, however, more than 99 per cent of all music files distributed in the country are pirate and China’s total legitimate music market, at US$76 million, accounts for less than one per cent of global recorded music sales.

Monday (Feb 04)’s actions follow in the wake of a decisive judgment against Yahoo China in December 2007 by the Beijing Higher People’s Court. The court’s finding that Yahoo China’s music delivery service is illegal under Chinese law sets a precedent for cases against similar operations in China.

Three record companies have now filed proceedings against Baidu. The new claims have been filed with the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court by Universal Music Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Hong Kong) Ltd and Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd. The three companies are asking the court to order Baidu to remove all links on its music delivery service to copyright infringing tracks that they own the rights to.

Action is also being taken today against Sohu and its associate company Sogou, which operates a similar service. Sogou makes profits through advertising that appears on the service and through sponsorship. Sogou also actively induces and encourages copyright infringement by means of recommendations and charts, while Sohu provides deep linking services through its associate company.

Sohu is the official sponsor of internet content service (ICS) for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

The legal action is being brought by four record companies: Universal Music Limited, Gold Label Entertainment Limited, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Hong Kong) Limited and Warner Music Hong Kong Limited. The cases were also filed at the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court. They follow four prior notices that were sent to both companies from July 2007 onward.

The claims against Baidu, Sohu and Sogou will be served on the respective companies by the court after the Chinese New Year.

Meanwhile, Yahoo China has still not complied with the December ruling made against it by the Chinese appeal court. As a consequence, the plaintiffs in that case have now filed execution proceedings against Yahoo China, asking the court to force Yahoo China to comply with the earlier judgment.

More at International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

LONDON, England, and TOKYO, Japan, February 4, 2008—LiMo Foundation, a global consortium of mobile leaders delivering an open handset platform for the whole industry, today announced the on-schedule availability in March 2008 of the first release of the LiMo Platform—the first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile handsets—together with the immediate public availability of the application programming interface (API) specifications.

LiMo’s technology will be showcased in Booth 8b135, Hall 8 at Mobile World Congress, February 11-14 in Barcelona.

LiMo’s initial Founder members—Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone—collaborated on Release 1 (R1), and nearly all of the enabling technology within R1 has been commercially deployed and proven within handsets enjoyed by consumers today.

The LiMo Platform—leveraging standards and open-source projects—is a modular, plug-in-based, hardware-independent architecture built around an open operating system, with a secure run-time environment for support of downloaded applications. Linux was selected as the core technology for the LiMo Platform for its acceptability by the whole mobile industry, its rich functionality and scalability, its record of success in embedded systems and mobile phones and its potential to easily “cross-platformize” with other product categories.

Third-party developers will use LiMo’s API specifications—available in beta form immediately at www.limofoundation.org—to build new applications that deliver next-generation consumer experiences across a tremendous, stable base of globally deployed mobile devices. Middleware components for the LiMo Platform can be implemented in either C or C++ programming languages.

Launched in January 2007, the LiMo Foundation is open to all vendors and service providers in the mobile communications marketplace, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, independent software vendors, integrators and third-party developers. More at Limofoundation.org.

Dec 24, `07 — The website of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention (NBCP) crashed on Tuesday, Dec 18, just hours after its launch, as droves of people logged on to complain about corruption among officials, ChinaDaily reported on Dec 20.

ChinaDaily further reports, “The website, yfj.mos.gov.cn, was closed for most of the afternoon, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

An NBCP official, who did not want to be named, confirmed the breakdown had occurred. “Repairs were carried out soon after the website broke down and normal service has now been resumed, he told the Xinhua News Agency.

“The number of visitors was very large and beyond our expectations,” he said. As of 4 pm of Wednesday, Dec 19, visitors had left 22 pages of messages in the website’s guest book.

While many of them referred to report specific cases of official corruption, these were redirected by the webmaster to other sites, such as that of the Ministry of Supervision.

Other visitors made calls for the strengthening of the government’s anti-corruption efforts, and comments about the need for special attention to be given to cases involving institutes of higher education and grassroots governments.

“The corruption problem in China is a fatal illness. Establishing more institutions will not solve the problem,” one comment read.

The enthusiasm that greeted the launch of the website reflects the growing frustration felt by the public toward corruption at government level, which has been accentuated by several high-profile cases in recent years.” More at ChinaDaily.

Beijing, China — Dec 20, `07 –The international recording industry today hailed a landmark Beijing court ruling confirming that Yahoo China’s music delivery service violates Chinese law by facilitating mass copyright infringement.

Yahoo China, part-owned by one of the world’s biggest internet companies, Yahoo, runs an operation enabling users to search for, play and download pirate music without ever leaving its website. Yahoo China’s appeal against a guilty verdict in April was today dismissed by the Beijing Court.

The decision is made under new Chinese copyright laws which entered into force in 2006. The Court separately ruled on a similar case against internet company, Baidu which had been brought under the previous Chinese copyright laws. The ruling confirmed that Baidu participated with and assisted third party sites in transmitting infringing music, but under the old laws Baidu was not liable for copyright infringement.

Music search services such as Yahoo China’s and Baidu’s, which “deep link” users to hundreds of thousands of pirate tracks, are a huge drain on efforts to develop a legitimate music market in China. Despite enormous market potential, music sales in China totalled US$76 million in 2006, less than one per cent of the global recorded music market.

Over 99 per cent of all music downloading in China infringes copyright, and services such as Yahoo China and Baidu account for the bulk of the problem. More at IFPI.

Round Rock, Texas — Dec 21, `07 — Dell and Tesco today announced the availability of Dell notebook and desktop computers in Tesco, a premier international retailer with operations in Europe and Asia.

Beginning next month, customers will be able to purchase Dell XPS and Inspiron products in Tesco stores, primarily in the UK, with sales also in Ireland, Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia.

Dell products will soon be available in more than 10,000 stores and on-line around the globe.

In the past several months Dell has announced relationships with Best Buy in the US, DSG International and Carrefour in Europe, Staples in the US, Courts stores in Singapore, Gome stores in China, Bic Camera Inc. in Japan, Carphone Warehouse in the UK and Wal-Mart in the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Mexico. More at Dell.

Taipei, Taiwan — Dec 19, `07 — DigiTimes is reporting on Motorola’s plan to launch its next-generation Linux-based “Ming” handsets in the second quarter of 2008, with the hand input intelligence handsets to be available in both high-end and entry-level versions, citing Bill Chen, general manager of of mobile device business at Motorola Taiwan.

DigiTimes further reports, “While Motorola’s R&D center in Beijing will continue to handle the development of the high-end version of the new Ming handsets, the US vendor will outsource the production of the new entry-level Ming handsets to the Taiwan-based Inventec Group, according to market sources, who also noted that the new Ming handsets will continue to support the 2.5G standard.

Motorola on December 17 launched its high-end 3.5G RAZR V9 in Taiwan, and the company plans to introduce in Taiwan a Symbian-based ROKR Z8, Windows Mobile-based Q9 and three entry-level models, including the W360 and W213, before the end of this year, Chen said.” More at DigiTimes.

ROUND ROCK, Texas –BUSINESS WIRE– Dec 13, ‘07 — Dell and DSG international plc (DSGi), one of Europe’s leading consumer electronics retailers, announced the availability of Dell notebook and desktop computers in DSGi stores.

Beginning in January 2008, DSGi and Dell customers will be able to buy a range of Dell notebooks and desktops through PC World, Currys and Currys.digital stores in the UK, as well as Dixons.co.uk online.

Customers will also be able to buy Dell products through the European network of DSGi store brands such as Electro World, PC City, and Elkjop. Customers can buy products in stores from Norway to Greece, and from Spain to Finland.

Dell also plans to sell systems through DSGi stores in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland.

DSGi’s unique TechGuys services in the UK will be extended across the new Dell products, providing full IT customer service availability including telephone support, installation and set-up. DSG operates similar support services across its European operations.

With this agreement, Dell products will soon be available in more than 10,000 stores and on-line around the globe.

In the past several months Dell has announced relationships with Best Buy in the US, Carrefour in Europe, Staples in the US, Courts stores in Singapore, Gome stores in China, Bic Camera Inc. in Japan, Carphone Warehouse in the UK and Wal-Mart in the US, Canada, Brazil and Mexico.

The DSGi and Dell agreement will cover stores in UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Greece, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

White Plains, NY — Dec 12, ‘07 — Nokia announced today that a United States International Trade Commission (ITC) judge issued an Initial Determination in favor of Nokia in the action brought by Qualcomm against Nokia alleging patent infringement.

The judge found no infringement or violation by Nokia of the three asserted Qualcomm patents. In addition, it was determined that patent ‘473 was found to be invalid.

Qualcomm filed its complaint on June 9, 2006 alleging infringement by Nokia of six Qualcomm patents. Prior to the hearing, which began on September 10, 2007, Qualcomm voluntarily withdrew three of the six patents from its complaint. The remaining three patents relate to an invention Qualcomm claims it made when developing CDMA technology. Qualcomm declared the three remaining patents as essential to the GSM standard and subsequently attempted to withdraw its declaration on one of those patents.

Similar patents, relating to CDMA inventions, are at issue in the European and China cases filed by Qualcomm against Nokia.

Qualcomm has yet to prevail in any patent litigation action against Nokia despite it having filed 11 lawsuits around the world over the past two years.

The judge’s Initial Determination will now be forwarded to the full Commission for review. The Commission is scheduled to make its Final Determination by April 14, 2008. More at Nokia, Qualcomm.

Related:

Qualcomm Wins Another Round in Patent Battles with Nokia

Another Round of Qualcomm vs Nokia Patent Battle Starts in Britain

Single Package Is Less than 1/100th the Size of Previous Tuner.

Dec 05, ‘07 — Sharp Corporation has developed the VA3C5CZ920, the industry’s first tuner module compatible with GB20600-2006, the China Digital Television Terrestrial Broadcasting System Standard. Sample shipments will start in late January 2008. This tuner module is less than 1/100th the size of conventional “can” tuners for receiving China’s terrestrial digital broadcasts. The small package size of just 10.7 x 10.7 x 1.4 mm means that this tuner module can go into mobile equipment such as portable TVs and allow them to receive terrestrial digital broadcasts.

Established in August 2006, China’s terrestrial digital broadcast standard has begun test service and plans are for a gradual conversion to full-fledged service. This is fueling expectations for a growing market in mobile equipment capable of receiving high-quality HD broadcasts as the country heads for major events like the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

Unlike conventional can tuners, key component tuners like this one mainly go into mobile equipment and must therefore be extremely small. The VA3C5CZ920 answers this call with a compact, single package achieved through proprietary high-frequency and high-density-mounting technologies that came out of Sharp’s experience in developing tuner modules for One-Seg, Japan’s terrestrial digital broadcast format.

Major Features
1. Industry’s first tuner compatible with GB20600-2006, the China Digital Television Terrestrial Broadcasting System Standard
2. The single package measures just 10.7 x 10.7 x 1.4 mm, less than 1/100th the size of Sharp’s previous tuner
3. Achieves low power consumption of 530 mW (during continuous operation)

More at Sharp.

Dec 04, ‘07 — In support of its upcoming special, Dino Death Trap, National Geographic has launched Dino Central Park.  Featuring a hidden “webcam” in Central Park , the website allows users to scare the pants off of unsuspecting New Yorkers walking through the park by controlling a virtual Dino hidden in the bushes.

Dino Death Trap , premiering Sunday December 9^th at 8:00 pm, digs up brand new species of dinosaurs from a lost age of the early Jurassic. Be there and join National Geographic as they travel to western China , deep in the dry and desolate Junggar Basin , when the graves never-before-seen Dinos are uncovered.

Some scientists are calling it “The Pit of Death”, others, “Dinosaur Pompeii”.  Envision dinosaur corpses stacked one on top of each other, piled four and five high.  A bizarre T. Rex ancestor, a Triceratops ancestor, an ancient Crocodilian, and nearly 40 more different species dating back 160 million years ago are uncovered in front of National Geographic cameras.

On Dino Death Trap you can follow a team of paleontologists, led by Dr. Jim Clark, of George Washington University , and Dr. Xu Xing, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as they unearth answers to a virtual black hole in dinosaur evolution.  Watch as the bones are examined, reconstructed and brought back to life, using high resolution CGI, and slowly probe the mystery of who these dinosaurs were, how they died and what they can tell us about the Lost Age of the Dinosaurs.

Want more Dinosaurs?  From DinoCentralPark, head over to NGCDinos where you’ll find 3-D Dino renderings, a fossil hunt game, a Dino mummy timeline, and six video previews of the show.

Dino Death Trap Previews, Dino Central park, NGCDinos. [ Thanks ‘Brian Ries’ ]

Beijing, China — Dec 03, ‘07 — Nasdaq opened an office in Beijing on Monday, a move that will let it step up efforts to attract more Chinese firms to list on the exchange.

Headed by chief representative Xu Guangxun, Nasdaq’s Beijing office aims to serve the growing number of Chinese companies listed or seeking to list on the technology-heavy exchange, the bourse said in a statement.

‘Having a representative office in China enhances our ability to provide the highest level of value and service to Chinese companies,’ said Eric Landheer, Nasdaq’s head of Asia Pacific, according to the statement.

‘We look forward to further growth and providing even stronger support to the 52 mainland Chinese companies already listed on Nasdaq.’

On Tuesday next week, the NYSE will also launch its representative office in Beijing, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported today.

It will help the NYSE to woo more initial public offerings in the fast-growing Chinese economy, the report said.

China agreed late last year to let the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq open offices in Beijing as part of deals struck during the first round of a high-level “strategic economic dialogue” with the United States.

The NYSE on Sept 4 won the green light from Chinese authorities to open the office, becoming the first foreign exchange that received such approval.

London — Dec 02, ‘07 — Leading British firms and government agencies have been warned Chinese state organisations may be spying on them.

UK intelligence network MI5 has contacted 300 chief executives and security experts at banks and financial institutions to raise the concerns.

It is alleged that UK organisations may suffer a concerted cyber attack to gain commercially-sensitive data.

Recently, the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, said that Britain faces a threat from digital espionage.

Experts say there have been unprecedented waves of attacks on computer systems worldwide in the last year.

A number of countries have accused China of trying to hack into their systems. It is believed many major developed nations engage in very similar behaviour. China’s highly sophisticated technologies make it a world leader in computing. More at BBC News.

Nov 29, ‘07 — BBC News is reporting on a huge campaign to poison web searches and trick people into visiting malicious websites has been thwarted.

“The booby-trapped websites came up in search results for search terms such as “Christmas gifts” and “hospice”. Windows users falling for the trick risked having their machine hijacked and personal information plundered.

The criminals poisoned search results using thousands of domains set up to convince search index software they were serious sources of information.

While computer security researchers have seen small-scale attempts to subvert search results before now, the sheer scale of this attack dwarfed all others. “This was fairly epic,” said Alex Eckelberry, head of Sunbelt Software - one of the firms that uncovered the attack.

Eckelberry said tens of thousands of domains, many based in China and only a couple of days old, were used in the vanguard of the attack.

Websites loaded on these domains were booby-trapped with malicious software that looked for vulnerabilities in copies of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer used to browse them. “If your machine was not fully patched you were going to get hosed,” said Eckelberry.

The criminals who bought the domains convinced Google, MSN and Yahoo they were good and popular sources of information, said Mr Eckelberry, by using comment spam on blogs to push the pages up the search index rankings.

He speculated that the campaign was being waged by the Russian Business Network - a hi-tech criminal gang known to favour web-based attacks.

But, said Eckelberry, this attack was likely to be a harbinger of many more. “This is not going to go away,” he said.” More at BBCNews.

Beijing, China — Nov 26, ‘07 — French industrialists visiting China with President Nicolas Sarkozy say they have finalised trade deals worth almost $30 billion (€20bn).

These include a delivery of 160 Airbus passenger planes to the value of about $15 billion (€10bn euros). And state-owned French energy firm Areva said it had signed a contract to build two nuclear reactors in China.

The Airbus deal to supply 110 of the firm’s single aisle A320 jet and 50 of the slightly bigger A330 plane will be welcome news to the European planemaker, which has struggled in the face of delays to new models and the weakening dollar.

The announcements came as Mr Sarkozy held a second meeting with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao.

The reactors will be built in six years’ time in the south of the country and will start generating power in 2014.

They will be operated by a new company set up by Areva and its Chinese partner, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp, until 2026.

China is increasingly looking to nuclear energy to meet its growing demand for power and France is keen to make sure that it is involved in this process.

Airbus and its American archrival Boeing Co. predict China will become the world’s second-biggest aircraft market after the United States, with airlines buying 1,900 to 2,600 planes over the next two decades.

Airbus’ final assembly line in the Chinese city of Tianjian is due to deliver its first aircraft in early 2009. The plant is expected to be able to produce four A320s a month by 2011 and a total of about 300 A320 planes by 2016.

Following the signing of these deals, President Sarkozy will carry on with his official visit, his first to Asia since his election in May.

According to critics, the French President should be doing more during the trip to pressure China over its human rights record and use of the death penalty.

Some observers are calling on China to take a harder line with Iran over its nuclear programme. Mr Sarkozy has warned that it would be unacceptable if Tehran acquired nuclear weapons. Photo Credit: The AP.

A Chinese mining company has won a tender to develop one of the world’s largest copper mines in Afghanistan. The state-owned China Metallurgical group says it will invest nearly $3bn in the mine at Aynak in the province of Logar, south of Kabul.

Officials say it will be the largest foreign investment in Afghan history and will employ 10,000 people. When construction is complete the company will pay the Afghan government $400m a year.

The Afghan government wants to attract foreign companies to make mining a key sector of an economy that is on a slow recovery after three decades of war.

The Aynak copper deposits in Logar province were first explored by Soviet geologists in the 1970s. But then the Soviet invasion of 1979 and years of warfare put an end to plans to develop them. Officials say the area contains an estimated 13 million tonnes of copper, making it a world-class site.

It is also in a relatively safe area, not far from the capital. The $3bn that the China Metallurgical group is to invest in Aynak compares with a total of $4bn which the Afghan government says foreign companies have invested in the country since the overthrow of the Taleban six years ago.

Once it goes into operation in five years’ time, the mine will provide hundreds of millions of dollars of much-needed revenue for the cash-starved Afghan government. It will also provide thousands of jobs in a land where unemployment is one of the most pressing problems.

Kabul hopes to attract more foreign mining firms. The Aynak tender was hotly contested by companies from Canada, Australia and Russia, as well as China.

Experts say Afghanistan’s mountains are rich in minerals, which could become a significant base for the revival of the country’s shattered economy. Apart from copper, there is coal, iron, gas and oil.

There is also a sparkling assortment of gemstones - emeralds, tourmalines and garnets, and the lapis lazuli mines which provided jewelry for the Egyptian pharoahs three thousand years ago.

GENEVA –  Nov 19, ‘07 – The appointment of a Chinese judge to the highest court in the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been blocked by Taiwan in a surprise decision. Taiwan lodged its objection citing fears of bias and the step forced a meeting on the matter to be adjourned.

China’s Zhang Yuejiao was among four candidates nominated to the WTO’s seven-member Appellate Body in June. She would have been China’s first judge on the body, which rules on trade disputes between WTO member states.

The WTO dispute settlement body had been due to approve the appointment of four new members of the WTO’s appellate body, but Taiwan asked for that item to be removed from the agenda, WTO officials said.

Beijing regards the island of Taiwan - which has been under self-rule since the end of the civil war in 1949 - as a renegade province which should eventually be reunified with China.

It consistently blocks Taiwanese attempts to join United Nations bodies, but has made an exception for economic organisations such as the WTO.

Other members including the United States, Japan and the European Union insisted it should be included, and the chairman of the meeting, Australia’s WTO ambassador Bruce Gosper, was forced to adjourn it to find a way out of the impasse.

Taiwan — according to a copy of its statement made available by its WTO mission — said it could not agree to the agenda “because we have deep concerns on the question of impartiality and qualification of one of the recommended candidates to serve the Appellate Body.”

WTO sources said they believed it was the first time the appointment of an appellate judge had been blocked in this way.

The judges play an important role settling trade disputes worth billions of dollars between the WTO’s 151 members.

Dispute settlement is at the heart of the multilateral trading system and its system of rules which are umpired by the WTO to ensure that countries can trade fairly with each other.

Shanghai’s stock exchange says it is considering allowing big multinational companies to list shares.

BBC News is reporting on China’s largest exchange may permit companies such as HSBC, Coca-Cola and Siemens - which have large business operations in the country - to trade.

“Que Bo, assistant general manager of Shanghai’s exchange said it was doing market research on the plan and expected to “get some results soon”. He said the plan would make Shanghai’s market more competitive.

Analysts said such a move would accelerate government efforts to ease restrictions on investment in and out of China.

Coca-Cola has invested $1.25bn in China since entering the country in 1979 and German engineering firm Siemens helped build the world’s first commercial magnetic levitation - or maglev - rail service in Shanghai.

“To strengthen the blue-chip market, we have been planning to list such multinationals as HSBC, Coca-Cola and Siemens, which have developed very well in China,” China’s official Xinhua news agency quoted Que as saying.

Companies tend to list shares in their home markets although secondary listings in countries where firms have significant business interests are not uncommon.” More at BBCNews.

Chinese espionage poses “the single greatest risk” to the security of US technology, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission has told Congress.

Washington — Nov 15, ‘07 – China is pursuing new technology “aggressively”, it says, legitimately through research and business deals and illegally through industrial espionage.

China has also “embraced destructive warfare techniques”, the report says, enabling it to carry out cyber attacks on other countries’ infrastructure. A foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing denied any spying activities by China.

The advisory panel, appointed by Congress, recommended that US security measures and intelligence be stepped up to try to prevent the theft of military technology, in particular. “Chinese espionage activities in the United States are so extensive that they comprise the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies,” the report said.

It urged Congress to study “military, intelligence and homeland security programmes that protect critical American computer networks and sensitive information, specifically those charged with protecting networks from damage caused by cyber attacks”. The report also identified other grounds for concern, such as the fact that the Chinese are manufacturing “sophisticated weapon platforms” speedily and efficiently.

The unexpected pace of China’s military development has fuelled analysts’ suspicions that it is being helped by stolen information, the commission said. In addition, the Chinese media - firmly under state control - are being used to create “deep feelings of nationalism”, it said. In an international crisis, the panel warned, that could turn misunderstanding into conflict.

The report also criticised Chinese economic policy, saying that small and medium-sized American businesses “face the full brunt of China’s unfair trade practices, currency manipulation and illegal subsidies for Chinese exports”.

In September, the Chinese government denied reports that its military had hacked into the computer network of the US defence department in Washington. Chairman Carolyn Bartholomew’s opening statement on the release of the 2007 Annual Report to Congress (in PDF).

American video stores have new-release sections. Chinese video stores have not-yet-released sections.

Beijing, China — Nov 12, ‘07 — Dawn C. Chmielewski of LA Times reporting on rampant video piracy in China. In his words, “On a recent weeknight here, four people entered a neighborhood shop, where a clerk escorted them through a back door to a closet-sized room.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves brimmed with some of the latest Hollywood movies, including “Ratatouille,” which had just reached Chinese theaters a week earlier and wasn’t due out on DVD until January. Also filling the shelves were entire seasons of such popular American TV shows as “Entourage” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” Each disc was bootlegged, selling for as little as $1.33.

Closed off from the rest of the store, the room looked hidden. But it’s secret to almost no one here — least of all this group that included two entertainment lawyers from Washington and Hong Kong as well as two representatives of the Motion Picture Assn., the film industry’s biggest trade group.

They were there to show a reporter the notorious black-market DVD store, Beijing Yongsheng Century International Cultural Co. It has been raided so often — 14 times since 2005 — that it’s acquired the nickname “Dan’s Shop,” after Dan Glickman, chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

About 93% of the movies sold in China are counterfeit – black-market discs are sold in stores and by legions of roaming vendors who peddle them at subway stations and from their bicycles. Some make home deliveries.” More at LATimes.

Taipei, Taiwan — Nov 11, ‘07 — Taipei Times is reporting on Investigation Bureau officials warning of “Focused Attack” of Trojan horse viruses on Large-capacity hard disks, often used by government agencies. 

The newspaper further writes, “Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said.

Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said. The tainted portable hard disc uploads any information saved on the computer automatically and without the owner’s knowledge to www.nice8.org and www.we168.org, the bureau said.

The bureau said that hard discs with such a large capacity are usually used by government agencies to store databases and other information. Sensitive information may have already been intercepted by Beijing through the two Web sites, the bureau said. The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved.

In recent years, the Chinese government has run an aggressive spying program relying on information technology and the Internet, the bureau said. The bureau said this was the first time it had found that Trojan horse viruses had been placed on hard discs before they even reach the market.”

China and Taiwan regularly trade accusations of spying and last month Germany accused China of being behind Internet espionage attacks on its companies and government. China said it opposed such accusation

The Taiwanese newspaper later reported, “VIRUS: Investigators say the tainted Maxtor portable hard disc, made by Seagate, uploads information saved on the computer automatically to Web sites in Beijing.

Further investigations suggested that “contamination” took place when the products were in the hands of Chinese subcontractors during the manufacturing process.

In September, TheRegister said that Kaspersky Labs had found a pre-installed virus named Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah on Maxtor 3200 external hard drives sold in the Netherlands.” More at TaipeiTimes here and here.

Beijing, China – Nov 09, ‘07 — A Chinese official gave the clearest sign yet that Beijing will reject binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions at a global meeting next month, saying developing countries must be allowed to raise emissions to fight poverty.

Beijing is about to overtake the United States as the world’s top greenhouse-gas producer. It is under pressure from Washington to accept binding limits at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia of environment ministers from 80 nations to discuss a possible replacement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on emission reductions.

Nations agreed in Kyoto to cut output of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to below 1990 levels by 2012. But China, India and other developing economies are exempt.

“Climate change is caused mainly by developed countries,” Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui said. “They should have the main responsibility for climate change and to reduce emissions.”

“Most developing countries are in the process of industrialization and urbanization, and they face the arduous task of poverty reduction,” Zhang said. “So they need a large period of time for continuous energy demand growth with the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Zhang did not say directly what Beijing’s position would be at the meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali, and he did not take questions from reporters.

A European Union official who met this week with Chinese leaders said they told him in private meetings that Beijing could not accept any binding obligations.

Beijing, China — Nov 07, ‘07 – Microsoft and China’s No. 2 personal computer maker signed an agreement Wednesday to pre-install Microsoft’s Windows operating system in PCs to combat widespread Chinese product piracy.

The agreement with Founder Technology Group Corp. shows “the commitment of both companies to protect intellectual property rights,” the companies said in a joint statement. Founder also will sell Microsoft keyboards, Webcams and other hardware in more than 500 stores across China, the companies said.

“Our partnership with Founder is an essential part of our strategy here in China and around the world,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at a signing ceremony. Founder President Qi Dongfeng, speaking at a news conference later, declined to say how much the Chinese company would pay Microsoft. Qi said Founder expects to pre-install Windows on nearly all its consumer PCs and about 40 percent of its business computers.

Ballmer did not take questions from reporters or mention piracy directly in his comments. China is the world’s leading source of illegally copied software, music and other goods. Foreign officials and business groups say the scale of piracy is growing despite increased Chinese enforcement.

Some 82 percent of software used in China last year was pirated, well above the Asian regional average of 55 percent, according to an industry group, the U.S.-based Business Software Alliance. More at FoxNews.

Shanghai, China — Nov 05, ‘07 — PetroChina Co. almost tripled on its first day of trading in Shanghai, becoming the world’s first company to be valued at $1 trillion, larger than the entire Russian stock market. PetroChina Co. almost tripled on its first day of trading in Shanghai, becoming the world’s first company to be valued at $1 trillion, larger than the entire Russian stock market.

The milestone underlined the ongoing boom on Chinese markets, which have been flooded with ready cash brought by hungry investors who have disregarded warnings that the China bubble is destined to burst eventually.

Asia’s top oil and gas producer already traded in Hong Kong and New York, but PetroChina’s new shares made their debut Monday on the Shanghai bourse after the largest initial public offering ever on the Chinese mainland.

The shares, priced at 16.7 yuan for the IPO, touched a high of 48.62 yuan (6.5 dollars) shortly after the market’s opening, an increase of 191 percent that valued the firm at about 600 billion dollars more than ExxonMobil. The IPO of PetroChina, which raised nearly nine billion dollars in its sale of four billion shares, is the world’s biggest this year and the largest in mainland China’s history.

The oil producer’s Shanghai listing pushes China’s stock market beyond the U.K. as the world’s third-largest. PetroChina trades at 55 times earnings, four times Exxon’s ratio of 13 times earnings and near the 58 times for Google Inc., the world’s most-used Internet search engine.

In terms of earnings, however, PetroChina does not even make it into the top 50 companies of the world, raising a red flag both about the valuation of the firm and the overall sustainability of the Chinese stock boom.

China’s largest oil and gas producer had 20.5 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in 2006, compared with 22.1 billion for Irving, Texas-based Exxon, data compiled by Bloomberg show. PetroChina has been adding new reserves at an average annual rate of 5 percent for the past three years, a faster pace than Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc, the world’s largest oil companies by sales.

Beijing–Nov 01, ‘07–Network gear maker Cisco Systems announced a multiyear, $16 billion expansion in China on Thursday with investments in manufacturing, venture capital and education.

“We’re going to the next chapter for Cisco in China,” John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, said at a news conference.

The ventures include an agreement with Alibaba Group, China’s biggest online commerce company, to explore developing business services for small and medium-size companies, Chambers said. It has also made a similar pledge to ramp up its presence in India, where it plans to triple its workforce by 2012.

China and India are key battlegrounds for global technology firms, because of their massive domestic markets and the attractive low-cost manufacturing locations they offer.

Cisco is not planning a major expansion of its own manufacturing capacity but outlined a range of other initiatives including:

• Procuring more materials and components from Chinese companies

• A provisional £100m joint venture plan with China Development Bank to supply finance and support for innovative Chinese firms

• A provisional alliance with online business network Alibaba to buy a stake in the Chinese firm and jointly supply business solutions to small companies

• Funding an extra 300 networking academies in Chinese vocational colleges, training 100,000 students by 2010

• Setting up Cisco’s first “green” technology centre to focus on sustainable development

Cisco said China’s economic potential offered it huge opportunities, but it was equally committed to helping to tackle the country’s social and environmental challenges.

Under plans unveiled on Wednesday, Cisco’s Indian workforce will increase from 3,000 currently to 10,000 by 2010. Cisco intends to use its new factory in Bangalore as a research and development hub for products aimed at emerging markets in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

The firm, which also plans to invest $100m in healthcare projects, said India was “at the heart of our globalisation vision and provides a platform for Cisco to capitalize on the growth potential in the emerging world”.

Beijing — Chinese news agency Xinhua is reporting on China would be using their own home grown TD-SCDMA mobile technology during the upcoming Olympics next year.

Xinhua reports, “We are expanding the TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) network tests and the public will enjoy customized 3G services at next year’s Olympics,” said Xu Qin, director of the high-tech industry department of the National Development and Reform Commission, at a forum.

 But the official did not say whether the other two types of CDMA technologies - the US-made CDMA 2000 and the European WCDMA, which have both been given the green light by the Ministry of Information, would be used in the Olympics.

The Chinese government has promised to provide 3G mobile communications services in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics but has not specified what kind of 3G technologies will be used.

Lou Qinjian, deputy minister of the Information Industry, said last Thursday that it was undecided what kind of 3G technologies would be used during the Beijing Olympics. ”Our major concern is whether the technology can satisfy the bandwidth and transmission speed requirements,” he said.

Lou also disclosed that there was no timetable for the issuance of 3G licenses as relevant departments were still mulling over the management and operational mode of 3G services. But analysts said the homegrown standard is most likely to get the first license. TD-SCDMA Forum