Youku to enforce copyrights?

Whoa: in an unprecedented move for a Chinese company, Youku announced their new copyright identification management platform on their blog today. Needless to say, Youku is the first Chinese company to attempt regulation of intellectual property rights on the internet. We know China's always "cracking down" on copyright infringement, or at least talking about it (remember the Expo IPR expo?), but this looks like the most legitimate attempt to enforce intellectual property rights we've seen yet.

From Youku Buzz:

As Youku increases the scale of content acquisition and cooperation with its content partners in China and abroad, so increases the need for a more stringent copyright monitoring system built on more advanced technology. With the launch of the new platform, Youku radically improves its capability to identify and prevent the upload of infringing video content by Youku users. Through this system, legitimate copyright holders can take full advantage of Youku’s value chain, from content to platform to marketing.

Youku Chief Technology Officer Yao Jian said, “Trial operation of the copyright identification system has already begun for European and American audio-video copyright holders. Following this initial stage of operations, we will continue to improve and perfect the system, making it more efficient and more convenient to use.”

In addition, Youku Buzz states that the company also joined China's "Network Copyright Committee," which was apparently founded today. We're not sure about that, since Xinhua says the committee was founded in December: we guess "legitimated" would be a better way of putting it. While it's a great victory for copyright holders and a definite step forward for China in the global economy, it means we're going to have to find a different way to watch the new season of 24. Or we could just wait until it's pirated, printed and sold at our local DVD shop, of course.