Alibaba and the Copyright Pirates

Jack Ma hires Washington help in his quest to clean up his sites

Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, is reaching out to companies that feel his sites tolerate piracy. Several U.S. trade groups have praised his recent effortsPhotograph by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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By Bruce Einhorn

September 27, 2012 at 10:26 PM UTC

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This article is part of the October 1, 2012 issue of businessweek.

As one of the most successful entrepreneurs in China, Alibaba Group Chief Executive Officer Jack Ma has grown accustomed to hobnobbing with A-listers. Alibaba’s billionaire founder is friends with movie star Jet Li. Former President Bill Clinton, ex-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman are among the big names he’s attracted to Alifest, the annual September celebration of all things Alibaba at the company’s headquarters in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.

Unfortunately for Ma, the Obama administration isn’t as star-struck, lumping his company with an unsavory crowd of alleged copyright pirates in an annual list of “notorious markets” that the administration says enable theft of American intellectual property. Last year, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative took Ma’s business-to-business marketplace, Alibaba.com, off the name-and-shame list but kept Taobao Marketplace, Ma’s online mall, on. It’s not hard to find knock-off products on the site. Even before the iPhone 5 has gone on sale in China, would-be shoppers on Taobao can find inexpensive dummy versions of Apple’s new phone, complete with the company logo on the back.