Ten of China's major news agencies and websites formed a union in Beijing on Wednesday in order to provide better copyright protection for the media.

The union was set up at a conference on internet copyright protection, where a declaration of the union was read by Zhou Xisheng, CEO of ChinaSo, a search engine set up by the country's major news organizations, and a founding member of the union.

According to the declaration, the union will play a significant part in issues including the unified management of news copyright, and will support its members to uphold their own copyrights.

The declaration also criticized misconduct in the news business, such as piracy, incorrect or fake quotes and unauthorized reprints, which severely hurt the enthusiasm of journalists and negatively affect the sustainable development of the business.

The union has called for the society to respect and protect news copyrights, and has asked for more news organizations to join the union to improve the situation.

A total of 115 media outlets released a joint statement at the conference, also calling for better copyright protection in the news business.

China has been emphasizing the importance of copyright protection recently, as a national copyright monitoring website was set up on April 20, which was seen as a step forward in the nation's crackdown on piracy.

The website, www.12426.cn, is managed by the Copyright Monitoring Center under the Copyright Society of China, providing identification, security monitoring, early warning and rights infringement solution services for registered copyright owners.

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