The Chinese government will continue to impose strict measures to control Internet infringement and piracy, a senior official in charge of copyright affairs said on Wednesday.

In a special operation carried out between September and December last year, China's National Copyright Administration (NCA) closed 76 websites, confiscated 39 servers used for piracy and ordered 137 websites to delete content that infringes upon regulations, Yan Xiaohong, NCA deputy commissioner, told a press conference on Wednesday.

The administration fined 29 websites 789,000 yuan (98,625 U.S. dollars) and transferred 18 suspected criminal cases to judiciary departments during the operation.

The administration had received 1,042 letters of complaint involving piracy of literary works, music, TV series, films, software and computer games by Oct. 31, 2005, of which 172 have been placed on file.

Out of the 172 cases, 14 were reported by overseas rights-holders' organizations, including the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA).

"This special operation has achieved anticipated results, and has been favorably commented by the public and overseas rights-holders and rights-holders' organizations," Yan said.

Source: Xinhua