In March this year, Jeboo.com sued the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in the Beijing Intermediate Court for defamation, apology to rehabilitate Jeboo’s reputation, and damages of RMB1 million. 

This is a surprising and aggressive action by the Chinese website, which was sued by five members of the MPAA for transmitting copyrighted movies through its website.  The parties settled out of court and Jeboo paid damages to the movie companies, but the parties did not mention infringement or compensation in the settlement agreement.

After the settlement, the MPAA released a statement on their website stating that Jeboo stopped their copyright infringement and paid legal damages, and had gained illicit profits through piracy, which had hurt the healthy development of various legal Internet services.  Jeboo.com believed that such a statement had severely injured its reputation and seriously harmed its business.  It took legal action against MPAA this spring and the case was accepted by the Beijing Court.

With the rapid development of online services in China, and rampant piracy on Chinese websites, the result of this new defamation lawsuit and the response of MPAA will be a focus for all Chinese Internet enterprises and foreign companies.