New developments in e-commerce regulation bring the issue of
intellectual property infringement and the liability of e-commerce
operators to light. A landmark case in China removed the defence of
the "Safe Harbor Principle" for the first time, and
should serve as an admonition to online platforms
The rise of e-commerce in China
In 2011, the e-commerce business in China underwent major
changes. After significant amounts of private equity (PE)
investments and many successful initial public offerings (IPOs) on
the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or NASDAQ, e-commerce operators
have increased resources to develop their business strategies. They
are no long playing a neutral role by providing a merely technical
and automatic processing of the data (for example, merely providing
space for a blog, etc.) but marketing aggressively as a real
internet value-added service provider (for example, providing
services in building up or optimising a member's own website,
etc.). This
