China's Wine Treasure Pirated

Posted by Daniel Workman Jul 24, 2006

Not only had four other websites published my article without permission, Google's search engine now ranks the copycat articles higher than Suite101's original Web page.

Here's a link to the original Wine Treasure article on suite101.com.

The topic originated from insightful discussions that I had with a Chinese friend who runs Ying Ying Soy Foods which sells a unique line of gourmet tofu at the lower level of the south building in Toronto's historic St. Lawrence market.

Direct from mainland China, the top-ranked copycat is China Wines Information Website. Much of the site is in Chinese language symbols, so I can't be sure of the copycat's mission statement or editorial policies. China Wines does mention www.suite101.com and my name as author. But that certainly doesn't bestow the Chinese website with the unconditional right to publish our articles. Suite101's Terms & Policies page clearly articulates that our articles are protected by copyright, and that reproduction requires written prior permission. To add insult to injury, China Wines is a for-profit commercial website. Although most of the text on their site is written in Chinese symbols, you can clearly see photos of wine bottles with corresponding prices underneath on their home page.

In second place we have All Asia a blogger that adds some fancy graphics to a counterfeit reproduction of our good old China's Wine Treasure article. This time, instead of naming me as the author, one Li Fang Wei takes credit as the article's "poster" (or is that "imposter"?). The fact that Suite101.com is listed as a source makes a mockery of copyrighted material since we are not a "source" that can be copied and pasted on a whim. I was able to post a comment on the copycat site, specifying that the original article is on Suite101 and also mentioning several links to other articles that may be of interest to the Asian audience.

The third-ranked copycat is China Food & Beverage Online, a buy-and-sell site in China. Again, while I'm flattered by being published by such a large and prestigious site, neither Suite101 nor I received any compensation from them for our work.

The fourth site was Wine Life Today, wine news for wine lovers by wine lovers. I guess they loved the China's Wine Treasure article, because it was posted in its entirety and had received several "Toast" awards from viewers. When I posted a comment explaining that Suite101 owned the original story, the site administrators immediately took down the counterfeit copies of the story. The site now directly links to the original article at Suite101, certainly a welcome change from the other copycats. By the way, our editor-in-chief is investigating and has the legal tools to enforce our copyright.

Finally, coming in at number 5 on Google search engine we have the original China's Wine Treasure article at Suite101.

On reflection, it's supremely ironic that I subsequently wrote an article entitled Copycats Hurt Trade. Hopefully this won't turn out to be the first chapter in my autobiography as a Web writer. But my article does discuss how difficult it is to impose copyrights and trademarks across borders generally and into China specifically, which may be why we're finding the counterfeit articles on China's Wine Treasure. That doesn't mean that the copycats are right, however.

It's very unfair to both Suite101 and in particular our fellow Web writers who are paid based on page views on the Suite101 site. Who knows how many page views I've lost to some of these Chinese sites that have posted the article without permission? I do know that mainland China represents a huge potential market for our articles - one to which we should have fair and unfettered access. After all, we did all that hard work.

Or, as our fearless editor-in-chief at Suite101 would say, "Sheesh!"