By Diao Ying (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-12-31 17:23

Throughout history people have read information carried on a range of materials, from bones, to stone, to bamboo and paper.

Recently a new medium has begun to carry the message - the computer screen. It has allowed much wider access to reading, but unfortunately for writers, the larger audience does not neceassarily mean more income - often it is none at all.

Noted writer Yu Qiuyu, one of the first authors on the mainland to speak out against piracy, says he would like to put his writing on the Internet "but won't be very happy if someone puts my work on the Internet without my permission, and makes money from it".

The first lawsuit related to Internet publishing in China was brought in 1999, when six writers sued a website for carrying their work on the Internet without their permission. The writers won.

But things are now far more complicated as the Internet booms. The number of users and websites are soaring daily at the same time technology becomes increasingly complex.

By the end of 2006, the number of Internet users in the nation reached 140 million. There were then more than 840,000 websites in China, a quarter of which were in Internet publishing-related businesses.

The development of the Internet has been so rapid that piracy has now easily moved to the cutting edges of communication - piracy employing Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) equipped cellphones. Online copyright violations have gone mobile as people now read material on a screen carried in their pocket.

Though new, WAP has developed rapidly in China, now the largest market of wireless readers in the world. By the end of last June, WAP user numbers had already reached nearly 45 million, with more than 260 WAP websites, most of which offer downloads of photos, ring tones and books.

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