Fake Web sites pop up as Goojje, YouTubecn

© 2010 YouTubeCN

By Cara Anna ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIJING | Imitation Web sites of both Google and YouTube have emerged in China as the country faces off against the real Google over its local operations.

YouTubecn.com offers videos from the real YouTube, which is owned by Google and blocked in China. The Google imitation is called Goojje and includes a plea for the U.S.-based company not to leave China. It threatened to do so earlier this month in a dispute over Web censorship and cyber-attacks.

The separate projects went up within a day of each other in mid-January, just after Google's threat to leave.

"What's the reaction in these cases? In the U.S., you have a lawsuit. In China, it's just 'eh,' unless they're really doing damage to the brand," said T.R. Harrington, CEO of China-based Darwin Marketing.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that she has told China the United States is concerned about Beijing's action and its impact on Internet freedoms.

Mrs. Clinton told reporters she brought up tensions about restrictions on Google when she met with her Chinese counterpart in London Thursday. She said the exchange was positive and candid, and that China feels strongly that it does not get credit for what it considers a policy of openness.

The Google and YouTube knockoff sites were still up Thursday.

It wasn't clear what Chinese authorities would do with them, if anything.

China's National Copyright Administration has been cracking down on illegally run Web sites and this month issued a code of ethics, but no statement was posted on its site Thursday about the new imitations.

Google had little comment. "The only comment I can give you right now is just to confirm that we're not affiliated," spokeswoman Jessica Powell said in an e-mail.

Sulamérica Trânsito

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