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Chinese e-commerce giant commits to fighting piracy

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - 11:17 by Paul Tissington

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China is known for its rampant industry of counterfeiting, much of which ends up sold on overseas as the real deal via e-commerce sites, which fraudulently purport to offer safe shopping online.

However, the first blow in the fight against piracy could have been struck this month, after it was announced that a major Chinese e-commerce service has signed a deal, that will see it actively combat the sale of pirated material.

Taobao Marketplace is the service in question and it has joined forces with the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents major western movie studios, so that products which infringe on copyright can be more easily detected and kicked off its retail platform, according to Reuters.

Fake products that do make it out of China are only part of the problem, as the country's budding market for safe shopping online is being consistently compromised because of these widely sold forgeries.

The authorities are having to crack down on the factories at which fraudulent goods are produced, but it is perhaps a better option to actually target the sites that sell them on to people over the internet, since this will help protect consumers and eventually make the production of fake goods less profitable for the fraudsters.

For people living in the UK the threat of buying a knock off item from one of our major e-commerce sites is less severe, but it is still very much a possibility.

Consumers have powers when shopping via sites like eBay and Amazon, a process which can involve buying direct from other users, rather than from the sites themselves, so even if you get a fake item you can still have a chance of getting your money back, if it does not meet the description given when you made your purchase.