Two Shanghai software professionals have been deemed guilty of copyright infringement after selling pirated Microsoft programs. According to Shanghai Daily, the pair had bought genuine Microsoft software to get a permission agreement and added pirated software to it to make buyers believe they were buying the genuine article.Although we're used to hearing about Chinese copyright infringement, the China Tech News reports that a majority of pirated Olympic broadcasts were made outside of China: About 1,600......

Last minute tip: For those of you that prefer to watch the Olympics online instead of on television, here's a great list of online destinations (some less legal than others) to get your Olympic fix.......

On display on Yahoo!'s news site for a good 24 hours: a picture of the five Olympic mascots standing on Tiananmen Square ready to welcome visitors under the headline "Tiananmen Square Massacre Remembered". Yahoo! has since blamed the boo-boo on an "automated gallery feature", writes Tania Branigan of The Guardian.Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap spotted this "anonymous" China sourcing which we still can't for the life of us believe made it to the New York......

Kaiser Kuo, digital guru of Ogilvy China and the man behind the Ogilvy China Digital Watch, throws an interesting light on the growing divide between the anglophone and the Chinese internets. Link to the full video here. [h/t to China Herald]......

And you thought they'd never get to it! Ctrip.com is now looking a lot more like a dot.com because you can now finally pay for that ticket you booked online via Paypal and with your foreign credit card. As far as we can remember, the last time we tried to book a ticket with our foreign credit card, their customer service staff directed us to fax in an authorisation letter to allow them to charge......

Andrew Lih reports on some websites newly accessible in Mainland China leading up to the Olympics. They include: BBC Chinese, Wikipedia Chinese, Radio Free Asia and Apple Daily HK newspaper. Lih is quick to point out that "there are plenty of sites still blocked in China, including Tor Project, Amnesty International, Wikia, The Pirate Bay, AboutUs.org, and LiveJournal." Lih's bet on when unblocked sites will be reblocked? "8 hours and 8 minutes after the Olympic......

U.S. senator Sam Brownback has charged China with installing Internet-spying equipment in all major hotel chains serving the Beijing Olympics, the Guardian reported on Tuesday. The conservative Republican cited hotel documents he received, stating that all guests at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying "will be subjected to invasive intelligence-gathering by the Chinese Public Security Bureau." Brownback refused to reveal the names of hotels, but handed out English-language translations of two separate documents he said......

In a critical post about a new search engine awkwardly-named Cuil, the folks at popular blog TechCrunch posted a screen grab of a Cuil search for "TechCrunch" and said: "And I have no idea who that person is next to the results for our 'About' section." Why it is none other than Shanghai's biggest R.E.M. fan, Sam Flemming, head honcho of Internet Word of Mouth research and consulting firm CIC. So, that answers the "who"......

Amnesty International's website is unreachable for journalists covering the Olympics one day after the organization issued a harsh report criticizing China's failure to make good on promises to improve human rights leading up to the Olympics. A more practical complaint from the press room — the internet is sloooooooooow. Welcome to our nightmare, guys. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, while admitting that websites for certain "cults" will indeed be blocked, blamed other inaccessibility......

Well, you might want to check out these Chinese website search plugins for your browser. Some work for IE7, too. [Source]......

The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center (CIIIRC) issued its first blacklist of websites containing "harmful information" on Monday. The websites were found to be spreading "low and vulgar content," according to Danwei, and had been previously sent orders to delete the illegal content, but the demands were not heeded. In an effort to "shame" them, the CIIIRC decided to expose the names of these websites on its blacklist. The sites include: http://club.qingdaonews.com/ http://bbs.cjn.cn/main.html http://et.21cn.com/......

View Larger Map Remember when Google's English-language map of Shanghai was, save for some groovy satellite pics, pretty much blank? Remember that? You should. It was like a week ago. Anyway, thanks to a tip on our Contribute Page, we learn that the map has gotten a makeover. To do this, looks like Google has teamed with MapABC, that same firm that does Google's Chinese maps and the same firm City Weekend is experimenting with......

Any kid on the playground knows that if the boys get together and make an exclusive club, sooner or later the girls are going to try to join — or at least beat the guys at their own game. The ageless dynamic is playing itself out right now in the high-profile world of Chinese hacking, a career that brings its more successful members money, power and something akin to super-stardom in the eyes of normal......

According to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center, online shopping expenditures in the first half of 2008 total 16.2 billion RMB, with Shanghai leading the way in per capita consumption. Looks like China's netizens are doing more than just stirring up trouble.......

Modern Internet connectivity meets old-school snail mail charm in Shanghai resident Paulo Magalhães’s popular website Postcrossing.com, which allows users to send and receive postcards from friendly strangers all around the globe. Founded in July 2005, the site grew wildly popular as fans passed the news by word-of-mouth and now boasts 50,000 users in 182 countries. On the occasion of its third anniversary, Shanghaiist caught up with the Portuguese innovator just as Postcrossing hit its biggest......

The miracle of miracles has happened, and 56.com has come back online, more than a month after it was shut down. While the company had promised a revamp, the website looks pretty much like it did before. Pacific Epoch tried to find out more, but the company is keeping its lips tightly sealed on what exactly transpired within that month.......

As the globe gazes towards China, it’s no surprise that some of the world’s best eyes have been attracted to the country to capture its image on film. Photographers old and new, local and foreign, have explored the nation’s landscapes, objects and people and are exhibiting their art in a place anyone can see it — the internet. For those who may never see the striking images in person, the visuals provide a partial description......

It won’t just be athletes and tourists descending on Beijing for the Olympics — an estimated 25,000 foreign journalists will be coming to the city to provide coverage for the event. We’ve already mentioned some of the tools being offered to the reporters, but a new report by New York organization Human Rights Watch released yesterday makes it clear how badly those resources may be needed. The report alleges that the Chinese government has violated......

With constant building demolition, commercial clutter and disapproval from Chinese authorities, it's no wonder graffiti in Shanghai is generally a rare sight. Juxtapoz features some exceptional masterpieces around Moganshan Road.Peking Duck's Richard analyzes the "iconic" theory applied to the CCP in China: "the main fault lies with the local authorities, not with the central party, which is trying as best they can to control their local counterparts." Richard quotes from an article in the Washington......

From Al-Jazeera:China is on course to join Japan and the US as a leader in the art of animation. Zhongnan Animation, is one of China's top animation studios — but fledgling at only 5 years old. There are approximately 1,000 employees working there and trying to compete in an industry dominated by Japan and the United States. As Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan reports, it is a lucrative market and China already has an audience of......

China's bloggers have always gone to extreme lengths to share information and criticism. But after the Weng'an riots this weekend, bloggers have had to become especially crafty when distributing information on the riots and their aftermath. In addition to burying coding inside search phrases that hide the words from online censors and taking a screenshot of written text, the Wall Street Journal reports netizens on Tianya.cn now flipping sentences to read right to left instead......

While yet more versions of the Weng'an, Guizhou riot have surfaced on the internet, the Guizhou provincial government has also finally given its version — which, believe it or not, has sparked off a new pop phrase on the Chinese internet — "I'm here to do push-ups" (我来做俯卧撑的). Netizens are now suddenly flooding the forums with pictures of TV host Ou Zhihang (区志航) doing push-ups in his birthday suit by famous Chinese landmarks such as......

Since Monday, we've been having problems accessing Facebook here and thought we were the only ones having that problem. Tuesday, we began to hear from friends of ours all around China complaining of the same problem, on the Shanghaiist Contribute page and among the China Twitterati. And then this piece by the WSJ's China Journal appeared, devoting five full paragraphs to Facebook's mysterious outtage. God forbid the day when we have to turn on our......

After their great series of stories about the Chinese media last week entitled "Brand China", National Public Radio (NPR) show, On the Media, has done another great story explaining exactly how the Chinese internet works and what role the internet plays in Chinese society. The show includes interviews with Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei and internet specialist, Rebecca MacKinnon, and can be downloaded or streamed for free. Transcripts of the show are also available for free.......

By Hilary Faxon and Adrienne Wong Youku.com, one of China's two largest video sharing sites, announced at midnight last night that it has closed a funding round of $30 million. Youku said in a statement that it netted $30 million from existing investors Farallon, Sutter Hill, Chengwei, and Brookside, and an additional $10 million in venture debt from Western Technology Investment. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Youku has more than 100 million video views a day. Ku6.com......

The famed Shaolin Temple has started its own online store on Taobao, and everything we've seen there looks like a bargain — from this Kinnara engraving (RMB1,800) to this god-knows-what-it-is (RMB9,999). The store, which opened a month ago, has sold a whopping 24 items. Reuters details all the praise Chinese netizens have for the temple's latest commercial venture here. Shanghai-based Ebay subsidiary Kijiji.cn has just announced its rebranding to Baixing.com. The company headed by Shanghai......

China Digital Times reports that a new virus is being distributed through e-mails with anti-China headings that ask readers to click on what looks like an embedded video player, but instead release a brutal virus onto the machine. Messages with subjects like “China is paralyzed by new earthquake,” “2008 Olympic Games are under the threat,” and “A new deadly catastrophe in China,” should be treated as potentially harmful.......

From Danwei: "But conspicuously missing from the list are the Big Three of the Chinese Youtube clones: Youku.com, Tudou.com and 56.com. Although 56.com has been off line for nearly two weeks after an apparent porblem with the authorities, these three websites have the largest amount of funding of any video websites in China, most of it foreign. By most accounts they are also the most popular video sites in China."......

He may be the President of 1.3 billion people, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t surf the internet like you and me. President Hu had his first interactive webcast through the People’s Daily Online this morning, answering tough questions like what he reads on the internet, and where he goes to feel for the pulse of netizens. For the full transcript of the webcast, click here.......

This sounds like a joke, but it's absolutely true. Luxury goods manufacturer Louis Vuitton have produced a series of three audio guides to China. Voiced by some of the top actresses in the business, the guides are produced like high-budget radio plays with sound effects, a plinky-plonky piano soundtrack and a plot. The Beijing and Hong Kong guides are voiced by Gong Li and Shu Qi respectively whilst Shanghai gets Joan Chen ("Lust, Caution", "The......