I’m in catch-up mode so far this week with respect to the news, but this story made it to the top of the list:

Internet-linked televisions, many containing peer-to-peer download tools, are winning buyers in China despite piracy concerns and a battle between government factions over how to regulate the industry, according to analysts.

China’s wealthy elite have taken well to Internet-connected TVs in the months since major vendors started selling them in the country. The devices allow downloads of movies and TV series, often through tools such as Xunlei, offered by a Chinese peer-to-peer download network operator that was sued last year for copyright infringement by members of the Motion Picture Association. (Yahoo!)

Lots of different issues here, copyright infringement being only one of them. On the IP topic, I don’t see the Internet access point (the TV, in this case) as much of an issue.

I will admit, grudgingly, that widespread of adoption of TVs with Net capabilities may result in additional use of P2P file-sharing networks simply because of ease of use. For some reason, a lot of people out there still don’t jump online and use torrent networks. Not that difficult – but then again, I’m a geek.

So you have end users with TVs accessing file-sharing networks (I’m guessing torrents, but I’m not sure). Can they seed files as well or just download? I would further assume only the latter, so not classic torrent-type software.

Liability? Well, file-sharing networks are an old subject on this blog. One big distinction is where the file is stored. Is this a YouTube-style thing, where the infringing file is uploaded to a third party server? Or is this a torrent-style system where the files are downloaded piecemeal from other users?

Another factor is the search system. Web sites are getting in trouble for not only storage of infringing files but also for setting up searching systems for infringing material (see, e.g., the Yahoo MP3 links case).

Therefore, I’d really be interested to see this sytem in action. If a TV-based search takes you, via a browser, to a third-party site that links to torrent files, for example, I think that the liability for the equipment maker is a bit tenuous.

Seems like one manufacturer, Haier, would love for this to be someone else’s problem:

When asked about the suits, the Haier employee said the availability of pirated videos on Xunlei or other download networks was “a problem in their own operation.” Haier chose Xunlei as a content partner because the service is convenient and has a large range of content, he said. Xunlei, widely popular among Chinese PC users, says it oversees tens of millions of downloads each day.

I actually agree with that.

Lastly, a lot of the jockeying for position here between the equipment makers, content and platform providers, and the government regulators are a thinly-veiled attempt to get a jump on the competition. Be aware that a lot of the complaining about infringing content is being thrown out there for competition reasons, not because some of these folks actually give a shit about the underlying IP concerns.

[O]ne government regulatory body sees the TVs as a threat to profits at China’s state-owned cable operators. And as authorities have taken steps toward regulating the Internet TV industry, at least two film distributors have unveiled plans to file copyright lawsuits against the TV makers themselves in recent weeks.

“Various content providers are sensing the attitude of the authorities and jumping on the related opportunities to advance or protect their own interests,” said Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting in Beijing.

One day all of us will be cynics.

We’ll see who gets sued first here, or which group loses out in the eyes of the regulators. All I can say is that the equipment guys seem to have a good case, while the platform folks better hope that there is some distance between themselves and those files that users are downloading.

All of this will be influenced mightily by the results of the pending cases against video file-sharing sites, both here in China and in countries like the U.S.

All of that should be worked out within the next couple of years, so some of this will have to wait until the courts have spoken.

Will the regulators here also wait and see? Probably not completely, but they certainly will be influenced by the litigation.