By Tang Zhao

Two young men were sentenced to jail and fined this week by Shanghai No.2 Intermediate People's Court for infringing intellectual property rights by setting up unauthorized private servers for a popular online game operated by Shanghai-based game operator 9you.

Zhang Jianwei and You Huangguang from Jiangxi Province, both 27 years old, were detained on December 24, 2009. Zhang received a one-year sentence and You a 10-month sentence. The court also fined them 100,000 yuan ($14,755) in total.

In 2008, Zhang and You downloaded online dancing game Audition and modified its code without permission. After making the changes, they made the altered software available for download from a website hosted by Jiujiang Telecom in Jiangxi Province, a subsidiary of China Telecom. They also set up their own server for users of the altered game to connect to.

As well as establishing the illegal server, Zhang and You started selling virtual currency through a third-party payment service provider for use in the game from May 2009, worth a total of 105,814 yuan ($15,613).

9you's public relations department did not respond when the Global Times asked the company for further comment via email.

"Compared with several years ago, most online game operators are now more aware of the need to protect their intellectual property rights," Chen Yongdong, associate professor specializing in IT and new media at Shanghai Theatre Academy, told the Global Times Wednesday. "However, those companies still face difficulties collecting enough evidence to sue unauthorized online game operators, as most of them are well-hidden."

Chen said that the popularity of illegal private servers for online games is due to the higher charges of licensed operators, as well as the government-mandated anti-addiction system to limit the playing time of minors that licensed servers must use.

"Most online game players are teenagers, who normally do not have a lot of money. In addition they are subject to restrictions on the amount of time they can play if they use official servers," he said.

Chen suggested that authorities should take more action to supervise game content, virtual currency trading and copyright protection of large operators' online games, rather than focusing on game addiction.

Shanghai-based Shanda, which operates Legend, another popular online role-playing game, ran into dispute with its South Korean partner when thousands of illegal private servers running Legend appeared in China in 2002 due to the game's code being leaked.