List : For :

Why is the Confucius Institute Online Stealing Content?

The Confucius Institute Online is taking China Expat’s content. That’s right, the Beijing-based institute with millions of dollars of resouces has been taking articles from ChinaExpat.com, an upstart website with no revenue dedicated to promoting Chinese culture and tourism. They have been taking original writing [update: the Institute resolved the problem on July 12th] in its entirety and passing it off as their own original content. In total more than four dozen (!) of our articles appear on their site and I could only find one time that they gave us credit. Just in case they try to eliminate the evidence we have taken numerous screen-shots and posted a sampling of them at the bottom of the article. This screen shot shows a page on their site that lists articles, every one of which [appears to be] stolen from China Expat. There are 20 (!) listed on this one page alone:

(Continue below screenshot) [update: July 11th's entry tracks the progress with the Institute]

(Click on image for larger view)

Here is the mission statement from Confucius Institute Online’s site:

Confucius Institute Online is the online headquarters of all Confucius Institute centers [in the world]. The site is administered by the Office of Chinese language Council International under the Hanban program. Our website is dedicated to providing Chinese language learning resources for both teachers and students, as well as to the promotion, and greater understanding of Chinese culture.

It is the last six words that are particularly sad since there is a wide perception in the world that China cares little about intellectual property rights (IPR). At a time when the country is making progress toward fixing the problem it is especially shameful that an organization making millions of dollars of year would seemingly choose to steal from a Hong-Kong based website that is only looking to promote China.

[update: two major blogs picked up this story: One is MSNBC's blog and the second is China Law Blog]

Our articles discuss lesser known regions of China and provide the expat community resources to make their lives here easier. Meanwhile a multi-million dollar school that overcharges its students and has ‘learning’ centers in dozens of countries cannot be bothered creating their own original articles, or even contacting us to ask for permission to reprint. The ‘school’ has gaudy marble statues and rich owners but cannot waste time sending an email asking if they can use other organizations’ articles.

[Update July 12th: The Confucius Institute has removed the content, and also contacted us expressing remorse both by email and phone.]

This situation unfortunately represents a mentality that some corners of Chinese society have found hard to shake. China first began its journey to the WTO in 1986, but was repeatedly rebuffed for its lax IPR enforcement. Six years after gaining entrance the country is clearly still struggling to catch up with its new elite position in the world.

The brazenness with which the institute chose to duplicate China Expat’s content is striking. In one week in June they appear to have stolen more than 50 pages of content from our website without a single article from a different source posted. Among those that they have taken were pieces about Uyghur musicians, our restaurant guides, and even a blog entry that I wrote[update: this blog entry is the only article that linked to us. However they did not receive permission to reproduce it]. Against my better judgment I am including a link to the site [update: the articles have since been removed and an apology was issued] since so that you can see the absurdity of it.

They seemed to especially take from us, but other English publications were not exempt from this [action]. In an ironic twist they saw fit to steal a 2006 article from the Beijing Review on piracy in China. The author’s name is included (presumably because it was part of the text) but not the source. Here’s the original.

As an institute whose very name conjures up images of the bedrock philosophy upon which Chinese culture is founded, this is a blatant and embarrassing indiscretion. The Confucius Institute Online should represent the proud tradition of an ancient civilization, not the sordid underbelly of modern China. This is not simply a naïve university student plagiarizing paragraphs from a famous writer. Instead it is a major [organization] taking advantage of an up and coming website trying to promote a foreign culture.

If China wants to shed its image as the wild-west of IPR, where stealing other people’s work is commonplace, it needs to shape up. Chinese often say that it is okay to buy copyrighted DVDs for 6 yuan because people here are poor and Hollywood is full of rich Americans. What can they say now that rich Chinese are taking from poor foreigners?

Below are some the webshots as evidence: [Update: I have sent an email to the contact address on the Confucius Institute Online they responded a few days later and I have posted their response.We have accepted their apology and believe they responded appropriately.]

(click to enlarge)

Above is the "borrowed" content. Below is the original.

______________________________________________________________________

Post a comment to voice your opinion on a story. Think I don't know what I'm talking about? Tell me your critique below.

Share This Post with

Comments

Shame on them!!!

On July 10th, 2007 LocalGuy says:

This is completely horrible! How could they do that!? They should be ashamed! They didn't even try to hide it!!

Same Here

On July 10th, 2007 AlexBowman says:

Content stealing: Good quality English-language content is few and far between. But for Confucius Institute to steal articles about IPR...

DalianDalian.com isn't even launched yet, but we've had reviews and listings stolen by xianzai.com. The reply from Xian Zai was that they had removed the person with Dalian responsibility, but browsing their most recent issue they copied even more content, both from us and other Dalian focused websites/companies.

Copying content in the Chinese language webosphere isn't unusual, in fact for something news-worthy it is normal. Magazine articles are often re-produced on BBSs, and one site's content appears on other sites. Baidu doesn't penalise content-duplication like Google does, which just highlights the normality of this procedure.

But you, and I, have had our content stolen. What can we do now?

Blog

On July 10th, 2007 Roberto says:

What better revenge than posting their illegal activities all over the internet!!

That's the best thing about the web, it levels the playing field. Imagine if CNN stole material 15 years ago. It would have been hard to do much, but now you can show them up right away!!

Brazen, indeed. Keep the

On July 10th, 2007 lasantamaria says:

Brazen, indeed. Keep the updates coming, I'm quite interested to see what happens!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but...

On July 10th, 2007 Richard says:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but piracy carries with it a stab in the heart!

Maybe we can all blog on their web site about what they do!

Online copyright infringement by Confucius Institute

On July 10th, 2007 ipdragon says:

Dear Josh,

I read about your ordeal and blogged about it at my site IP Dragon, gathering, commenting and sharing information about IP in China, to make it more transparent, since 2005.

Here is the link: http://ipdragon.blogspot.com/2007/07/is-infringing-ipr-promoting-greater...

Cheers,

IP Dragon

In China?

On July 10th, 2007 Pablo says:

Dude, are you based in China? blogspot is blocked. So you can steal content from THOSE blogs without fear of blowback hahaha.

What's the big deal?

On July 10th, 2007 Ellen says:

So what? They stole a few words. It's not like they stole something of real value like the treasures taken from Dunhuang to Europe, or the things that the Guomindong took to Taiwan. It's just words. Lighten up!

Just words, eh?

On July 11th, 2007 NJ Darko says:

Civilizations were founded on words and they are the building blocks of society. To summarily dismiss them as 'only words' is a bit callous. Imagine if someone had stolen from JD Salinger and passed them off as their own. Granted this is not exactly Salinger, but at least the concept is the same. No?

IP

On July 12th, 2007 dawei says:

I will post something on Onemanbandwidth when I get back off the road...

I have had several stories stolen and reprinted and have done little about it as I am not a commercial site...Though I don't condone this is any way-- especially from from a government sponsored group....

Best,

OMBW

Why is the Confucius Institute Online Stealing Content?

On July 14th, 2007 Anonymous says:

I sent Richard's view to Confucius Institute Online along with comments from readers and received the following reply. Maybe this will end the negative comments.
.......................................

We are extremely sorry for our infelicitous act. We have offered China Expat a frank apology for the use of China Expat's articles without their permission. We have now removed all of the articles that you cited from our webpage.

The Confucius Institute Online website is still in its testing phase. At this stage of its development we regret any mistakes that we have made.

We have disciplined all staff involved with the mistakenly used content. The person who was primarily responsible for mistakenly using your articles is no longer working with us.

Please accept our sincere apologies.

Sincerely

Confucius Institute online

Posted by: roger at July 12, 2007 10:35 PM
.....................................................................
Wow.

Posted by: richard at July 13, 2007 12:01 PM
.....................................................................

Let me repeat that. Wow. That's a hell of an apology.

And my god Richard, did you actually ban Nanheyangrouchuan. I'm kinda surprised it didn't happen sooner. :-)

Posted by: The Humanaught at July 13, 2007 08:01 PM
.........................................................................

It's all like that

On July 14th, 2007 Anonymous says:

After spending quite ten years here ,I can tell there is still a lot to do about IPR here in China.It began with VCDs,now with DVDs,Books, now Internet contents,and I don't know if some of you noticed that there other contents stolen from English websites or other English sources and translated in Chinese..I can read Chinese newspapers and I am sometimes stunned.

being dishonest

On July 14th, 2007 Anonymous says:

Curious why apology of CIO was not posted.

Confucius Institute

On July 15th, 2007 Anonymous says:

Why didn't you publish the apology made by CIO?

Posted

On July 15th, 2007 Pablo says:

It looks like it got posted the same day it got sent. Plus there is a giant sign on the fron tpage that says the info went down and there is a link at the top of this entry. What do you want?

And China Daily?

On August 13th, 2007 Anonymous says:

Don't forget that the mighty China Daily steals about 75% of their content from both international publications and expat mags in China. Keeping the source and original byline are few and far between for these literary thieves. And if you ever try to contact them via email, you can forget ever receiving a reply. It takes aggressive phone work or a live appearance to get their web editor to make the correction (though they won't actually remove anything they've stolen).

Not just a China problem

On December 13th, 2007 Anonymous (not verified) says:

Scraping sites for content is not just a problem in China. In fact, it is common for people to clone entire websites. Basically, they take someone else's website and just change the name and logo. Presto, your in the Internet business.

Scraping isn't just limited to shady upstarts. Wikipedia scaped one of my martial arts websites, taking every single article for which they didn't already have an article. Before this happened, a Google search for almost any obscure Korean martial art would return my site first. After Wikipedia scraped my site, they jumped to first in the list. I contacted Wikipedia, and they quickly posted new articles or made a few minor changes so that their article wasn't an exact copy of mine. They never contacted me or apologized in any way.

Intellectual property laws

On January 28th, 2008 promovare seo (not verified) says:

Intellectual property laws and enforcement vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

software

On February 25th, 2008 Anonymous (not verified) says:

According to tradition, Confucius was born in 551 BC. Spring and Autumn Period, at the beginning of the Hundred Schools of Thought philosophical movement. Confucius was born in or near the city of Qufu, in the Chinese State of Lu. ontwikkeling

Intellectual property laws

On June 24th, 2008 cyprus property (not verified) says:

Intellectual property laws are enforcable from anywhere

Well at least you got an

On August 12th, 2008 irish gift ideas (not verified) says:

Well at least you got an apology but it must be so frustrating knowing that the hard work and time you put into something can just be lifted and reused without asking or even acknowledgment.

There needs to be stricter international agreements to ban this practice. Afterall spam is being dealt with internationally and I think content theft is just as serious.

It must be very frustrating.

On September 5th, 2008 mens clothing big and tall (not verified) says:

It must be very frustrating. The silver lining (if you want to call it that - skant consolation though) is that you obviously create good content if they want to nick it.