Alibaba Group Says NO to Piracy, By Joining Forces with Five Key Government and Law Enforcement Agencies

By joining forces with China’s Ministry of Public Security, State Administration for Industry & Commerce, General Administration of Quality Supervision, State Intellectual Property Office and General Administration of Press and Publication, Alibaba today announced the war against the piracy and aims to create “synergistic online and offline mechanisms” to identify and shut down factories and other sources of counterfeit goods.

It’s been a long while, Alibaba group’s sites, especially the No.1 B2C ecommerce site Taobao Marketplace are suffering the complains about its counterfeit products from thousands of independent Chinese vendors. It’s obviously not an easy job to stop the piracy. According to Alibaba’s official news site Alizila, the company hopes to solve the piracy issue by the combination of digital “big data” technology with traditional law enforcement resources which could make investigation and enforcement of China’s intellectual property laws more effective.

Jack Ma, calls this country’s counterfeiting industry a “cancer” and a “tumor” in society. He did not exaggerate it. According to Alizila, “In 2012, a total of more than 94 million allegedly infringing listings were removed from Alibaba Group platforms. Approximately 5.5 million of them were taken down as a result of complaints from rights owners.”

People like shopping on Taobao in past years mainly because the products there are usually cheaper, even sometime they know the stuff they are about to buy are counterfeit products. It’s definitely good that Alibaba is now taking the lead, but we have to bear in mind that this must be a very long term effort as it is not just fighting against the piracy market but also many Chinese customers’ expectation.