Taiwanese digital media publication Talk Magazine Online yesterday accused a Chinese Web site of routinely copying its content within 30 minutes of it being uploaded.
Talk Magazine Online editor-in-chief Tsai Han-wei (蔡漢威) told a news conference in Taipei that his Web site — http://talk.tw/ — which has been online for two years, has been repeatedly plagerized by a Chinese outfit — www.918c.net — that had not only stolen its name, but was lifting stories and information wholesale on consumer electronics, travel, pets, movies, women’s talk, cuisine, astrology and health.
The alleged Chinese knock-off routinely copied his Web site’s content, “plagiarizing everything from text to images. The only difference is the characters, which they changed to simplified Chinese,” Tsai said.
His organization had known of its Chinese doppelganger for a while, but “the situation has become intolerable,” Tsai said.
Talk Magazine Online’s editors once uploaded the Republic of China’s flag and images from a Double Ten National Day parade to confirm their suspicions that the Chinese site was using an automated system to copy their material, Tsai said.
Even though the Chinese government bans such images from Chinese Web sites, the Chinese Talk Magazine Online site copied everything, confirming suspicions that the job was done by an automated system, he said.
Talk Magazine Online is an apolitical and nonpartisan commercial entity and the only reason it posted those images was to test its hypothesis and call attention to the ridiculousness of the Chinese plagiarists, he said.
However, the wholesale Chinese plagiarism is no laughing matter for the Taiwanese magazine.
“We spend millions of New Taiwanese dollars on each month’s issue,” Tsai said.
The Web site’s parent company, Momentum Media, said it has sent a letter of attestation to the plagiarizers and is considering pursuing legal action.
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