We have still had no response from Confucius Institute Online. Yesterday I reported that we stumbled upon a treasure trove articles [that sure look like they come] from our site. In total there were more than 50, and you can take a look at the details in yesterday’s entry to see the documentation. [update: situation apparently resolved]

What we have decided to do to remedy the situation is take an aggressive approach both in terms of direct and indirect action. First, we have already emailed the contacts on their web page twice. The content of those emails is included below. Second, a number of other blogs have picked up the story including MSNBC, China Law Blog, Peking Duck, and IPDragon. There may be others that we are currently unaware of. Hopefully this will increase the pressure them into compliance. Third, we have decided to contact some of the affiliated institutes around the world and make them aware that their partner and namesake seems not to care about intellectual property rights. We expect that this will bring additional pressure on them to change their practices. [update: I should note that we have full confidence that they will agree to comply. We are interested in hearing their explanation, which may be reasonable, although I would be interested in hearing it]

Here are the two emails that I have sent the Confucius Institute (Blog entry continues below):

_____

(July 10th)

To Whom It May Concern:

I have found [a number of] China Expat articles on your website. This is copyrighted material and we have never given you permission to post our content. [For example] the following articles you tried to claim as your own:

http://linese.com/cc/20404000000000000,259.html http://linese.com/cc/20404000000000000,257.html

[update: these links have since been removed from the website]

In total I counted more than 50 pages taken from our site. We have written a blog about it and invite you to respond and clarify why you have chosen to do this.

Sincerely,

Josh Gartner

*****

(July 11th)

To Whom It May Concern:

I wrote to you yesterday expressing my displeasure that you have reprinted China Expat articles without permission on your website. I am again asking you to explain why you have apparently chosen to violate IPR law, and at the very least [are] clearly [breaching] your moral obligation to [credit] original sources.

The Confucius Institute is supposed to represent the best of Chinese culture and teach about strong ethics. Your actions do not match your words. Please remove all of our articles from your website. If you would like to give us credit we can discuss an arrangement where we provide one or two articles, but having more than 50 on your site without permission is unacceptable.

I continue to await your response.

Sincerely,

Josh Gartner

*****

Since those attempts have yet to elicit a response, and NBC’s calls to the Institute yesterday went unanswered, we have decided to move on to stage three of the plan: Contacting affiliated institutes abroad, which surely would not condone such actions [presumably the leadership of the organization here does not either]. Below is the text of the email that I am sending to The China Institute (NY), University College (Dublin), and University of Edinburgh (Scotland). The letter is the same for all (Blog continues below):

_____

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to inform you about something which Confucius Institute Online is doing that you should find deeply troubling. Recently ChinaExpat.com discovered that a huge amount of our material is being published on the Confucius Institute site without permission or accreditation. In total we have found more than fifty of our own articles and a number of suspect pieces from other sites as well.

We have sent an email to the contact listed on the site twice and are still waiting for a response. Yesterday I wrote a blog entry on my website about it and documented the situation, which you can read here:http://www.chinaexpat.com/blog/josh/2007/07/10/why-confucius-institute-online-stealing-content.html

In addition several other prominent websites have also picked up the story, most notably NBC and China Law Blog. NBC’s calls to the Institute went unanswered.

I am contacting you because you were listed on the site as an affiliated institution. Since they are taking these actions under your name, I thought that perhaps you might want to discuss this with them directly so that we can resolve this unfortunate situation. I am confident that you had no role in this and would like to see the issue resolved as much as we do.

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Josh Gartner

*****

This process is especially interesting given the frequency with which plagiarism occurs in China. This is a bit of a test case in what can be done to reverse the policy without resorting to lengthy legal battles that tend to be counterproductive. Instead we believe that exposing the situation is more likely yield fast results.

How widespread is the problem? After reading my blog entry a friend who works for a wire service here told me that she once filed a report with an error in it. She re-filed as soon as she realized the error, meaning that anyone with a subscription to the service would have been immediately alerted. Later that day an angry Chinese editor informed her of the mistake. Unbelievably, he was complaining about an error in a piece of writing that he was illegally publishing. She explained that anyone with a subscription would have known and not printed it incorrectly.

In order to keep everyone informed of developments I will post any responses that I receive from the Confucius Institute or the aforementioned affiliated groups.

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.