China shut down 205 illegal websites and investigated 436 cases of online piracy from September to January, Yan Xiaohong, deputy chief of the National Copyright Administration (NCA), said at a press conference today.

Yan said during the four-month crackdown the NCA has collected 705,100 yuan (US$91,006) in fines and penalties.

Seventy-one illegal servers had been confiscated and six cases of online piracy had been transferred to judicial departments, he said.

A Chinese regulation that bans uploading and downloading Internet material without the permission of the copyright holder came into effect last July.

China is the world's second-largest Internet market after the US with over 140 million Internet users and 843,000 websites.

"About 130 cases involved foreign copyright holders and nearly 90 percent of those have been dealt with," said Yan.

The Motion Picture Association, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry and the Business Software Alliance filed 39, 39 and 52 complaints to the NCA, respectively, said Yan.

"China treats the domestic and foreign copyright holders equally without discrimination," Yan said. "The NCA will prosecute all proven cases of intellectual property infringement."

(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2007)