Authorities will maintain a round-the-clock watch on 216 Chinese websites in a bid to stop unauthorized transmissions of Olympic events, a senior official from the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) said yesterday.

NCAC Vice-Minister Yan Xiaohong said a surveillance team has been set up to detect and block all webcasts of events, except those that are authorized by the International Olympic Committee or CCTV.com, the official online broadcaster.

On receipt of a complaint, the NCAC monitoring center will decide if the transmission is legal or not, Yan, who is leading the team, said.

If the broadcast is found to be illegal, the NCAC will determine its origin and inform the relevant copyright bureau, which will either order the website to delete the illicit content within half an hour, or ask the local Internet supervision management department to close it down.

As well as representatives of the NCAC, the surveillance team includes staff from the Ministry of Industry and Information, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the State Council Information Office, BOCOG and CCTV.com.

Xu Chao, deputy director of the NCAC's copyright management department, said authorities must be on high alert to stop illegal Olympic broadcasts.

"China is in a transitional period in terms of IPR protection awareness, so we still face many challenges with regard to piracy," he said.

"Protecting Olympic IPR and other related rights is an international obligation, and the surveillance mechanism will help us to fulfill that," he said.

The penalties for illegal broadcasts include warnings, orders to delete unlicensed content, fines, shutting down servers and confiscating facilities and equipment, he said.

The NCAC has prosecuted three firms since March, Xu said.

In cases where firms earn more than 30,000 yuan (US$4,400) from unauthorized broadcasts, they will be prosecuted according to the law and face prison sentences of between one and seven years, he said.

(China Daily August 5, 2008)