Chinese Writers Association has confirmed that it had received an apology from Google in the form of a written document.

Google admitted in the document that it had scanned books under Chinese copyright for its online library.

It promised not to scan the books without authorization from Chinese writers.

The company is now working on a complete list of the scanned Chinese books.

Some Chinese writers welcomed Google's move and called for more attention to be paid to copyright infringement issues.

Bai Ye, a well known literary commentator in China, says those who publish works by others on the internet should respect the works' copyrights.

"The phenomenon of copyright infringement on the internet is very serious. We don't care how much compensation will be paid. We want to show our willingness together with other writers," said Bai. "Although Google is a powerful internet company, we should not ignore our rights and put the case under law. We hope Google will respect copyrights and Chinese law."

Some authors say they hope the copyright issue will prompt punishments for internet copyright infringement in the future.

Google has said it will finalize the terms of its agreement with the Chinese writers by the end of March and officially sign it in the second quarter.

The Chinese writers accused Google of copyright infringement last October when the search engine used sections of their works online without their permission. They demanded that Google apologize to them as well as pay them compensation.

(CRIENGLISH.com January 12, 2010)