Advanced Television

Disney takes on Chinese affiliate over piracy

November 25, 2008

Disney is fighting a piracy war over its recent film Wall-E against a company that its venture capital arm invested in. The infringing company, 56.com, a Chinese video sharing site that’s similar to YouTube, hosted several full-length bootlegs of Wall-E that were freely available on the company’s site. The bootlegs were added by users of the site months ago, but only recently have they been fully removed from its pages.

John Ball, founder and managing director of Steamboat – the Disney VC – , said his company was aware that pirated content was commonplace on the site when it made its investment in 56.com, but he was confident that the video service would remove illegal material quickly and “help the legitimate evolution of digital content online.”

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