When China decides to seriously protect intellectual property, one imagines the government will have quite a massive wall of work in front of them. As the nation that holds the global reputation for turning technological piracy into an art, China could stand to bring forward some high-profile cases and show the world that it is serious about protecting copyrights and patents. Instead, China has chosen the path of irony, and righteously sues foreign companies, like Apple, for absurd copyright infringement.

Long besieged by complaints about the rampant sale of pirated media throughout the country, China has responded in recent years by targeting the distributors of stolen content. Rogue search engines like GouGou (I know, right?) have been shut down, while mainstream search engine Baidu has pledged to rid its remove pirated content from its platforms.

But we are also talking about the country that loves to work over Cupertino, with everything from smuggling Apple products out of country with zip lines  to actual fake Apple Stores, complete with the same signage and staff uniforms as the real ones.

"Of course this is really an Apple store. Why, just look at my authentic blue shirt!"

Regardless, a Chinese court recently ruled against Apple for, of all things, indirectly allowing the sale of pirated books on iOS devices. Reuters reports that Apple has been fined 1 million yuan ($160,400) for allowing third-party applications on its App Store that allegedly sold stolen ebooks. This appears to be a case where the Chinese government wanted a high-profile case involving Apple to show they were serious about stopping piracy, but at the same time did not want to levy any serious fines that might damage their relationship with such a major business partner.

So, nothing was really done to stop piracy, like going after the app developers who actually created the nefarious apps and profited from them, and nothing was really done to anger Apple. Most ironic of all, nothing was really done to make whole the authors who brought the case in the first place.

"We are disappointed at the judgment," said Bei Zhicheng, spokesman for a group of authors who were hoping for an award of closer to 10 million yuan. "The judgment is a signal of encouraging piracy." 

So, really, nobody wins. Except, as usual, the Chinese pirates who apparently sail away unscathed with their ill-gotten gains.

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