China Slams US Piracy Complaint 346
bingoathome writes with a link to a BBC article on China's criticism of the US over its complaint to the WTO. The Bush administration is breaking its long-standing policy of backroom conversations with Beijing to condemn the country's continued 'failure to address copyright piracy and counterfeiting.' "The US says that China's failure to enforce copyright laws is costing software, music and book publishers billions of dollars in lost sales ... The US has been threatening a WTO complaint against China since 2005. It said on Tuesday that the two cases had been submitted to the WTO. One case claims that Beijing's poor enforcement of copyright and trademark protections violates WTO rules. The other contends that illegal barriers to hamper sales of US films, music and books. "
Odd... (Score:3, Interesting)
I imagine they'll be open again soon, but it shows that China cares to some extent.
Re:Interesting how they chose their battles. (Score:3, Interesting)
Piracy is such a way of life in some Asian . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Priorities (Score:3, Interesting)
[sarcasm]That's one mighty convincing arguement you have there.[/sarcasm] Seriously, where are your supporting facts or sources to back-up your claims? The burden of proof rests on you.
Re:Not disagreeing with the basic premise (Score:3, Interesting)
There are a few problems with this reasoning.
First of all, if the USA deals with USA citizens commiting war crimes or the other things the ICC deals with, then the ICC never comes into play. It only becomes a problem when the USA refuses to deal with war crimes or similar commited by its own citizens.
The ICC is a last resort for those cases where countries refuse to deal with things themselves.
The USA (as usual according to many) has had no problem whatsoever forcing such things onto others (going back to at least the end ofWorld War II, and much more recently, Serbia).
So, again the USA wants to force things onto others, while being exempt from those things itself. What is more, they want to be able to let war criminals go unpunished if that comes in handy for whatever reason.
because of this, I find the constitutional argument a weak one at best, a theoretical argument that as long as the US justice system works properly will never ever become more then theoretical.
Re:Interesting how they chose their battles. (Score:3, Interesting)
Just follow the $$$.
Ignore the counterfeits for a moment. Every year for the last 22 years, the trade deficit with china has gone up. January alone was $25.6 BILLION http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700. html#2006 [census.gov], up from $21.4 billion the previous January. With those numbers, WalUSMart is looking at a $300 billion trade deficit this year, just with China.
This could be a way for BushCheneyHalliburton to lay the groundwork for further import duties. Even a 10% across-the-board surtax would generate $30 billion (and you're probably looking at a rate more like 33% to 50%). Thats so much money its hard for them to ignore. Of course, it means that all those cheap imports get more expensive, but that only hurts the poor (in both countries), and there's no evidence Bush even knows the poor exist, except as cannon fodder.
Re:Piracy is such a way of life in some Asian . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me tell you what is playing in Beijing cinemas right now: Flyboys, Sixteen Blocks, A Night at the Museum, Eragon, and probably a Hong Kong flick or two.
Not to pass judgment on any of these movies in particular. I enjoyed a couple of them, myself. But do you see the pattern? These are the most popcorn, inconsequential, and super-commercial of Hollywood's output. There isn't a challenging, thought-provoking moment among them. It was a national event when we got Casino Royale, "uncut!" (Those might have been projection glitches, but I have my doubts.)
I mention this because movies are only approved for legal DVD sale if they can pass the censorship to make it into theaters in the first place. The studios are full of shit when they claim that they're losing money, because there are no legal DVDs worth buying in the first place. The legal movies are pretty cheap, they have decent Chinese subtitles, and they're certainly easier to get than the pirated stock. People aren't buying for the same reason ticket revenues are down in the States: the movies suck.
Do you want to see the award-winning art movie that everybody on the internet is talking about? If you're in China, you have to buy it off the street or in a hidden back room. If a Chinese person wants to see a piece of provocative film art about their own country, they have to buy a pirated copy. Even the better popcorn fare is banned: we didn't get Dead Man's Chest because the yarr matey pirates are a bad moral example to the tender, innocent Chinese public.
I work in the Chinese film industry, making domestic commercial movies. We probably lose money to movie piracy (although it was virtually impossible to find an illicit copy of Curse of the Golden Flower- which shattered Chinese BO records). But part of the job description at the office is to stay on top of international trends. There are only two ways to do that: piracy in the office, or massive travel budgets to send the whole office to Hong Kong every couple of weeks- which we can't do either, because the Chinese citizens in the office aren't free to travel there unrestricted.
I know it's too much to ask for principled international leadership from my mother country, but if the United States government would pull their heads out of the MPAA's ass for one minute, I might hope that they would see that piracy isn't what's killing Hollywood's profits in China- the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television is. And they're keeping the domestic industry at a third-world level while they're at it.
How about some WTO threats about that?
(Also, while I'm dreaming, if they could apply some pressure to make the Chinese fish less lead than fish and the air more air than choking soot, that would be fantastic.
Why do I live here, again?)
Re:dvd's cost a quarter in shanghai (Score:3, Interesting)
So, i said "well, if they're not interested in the market, I'll just keep copying, they obviously don't care. If they change their minds, and want to make a realistic offer considering the average income here, I'll happily listen".
It's kind of catch-22, because one of the arguments they have for the lack of interest is the amount of piracy in the country, but the piracy itself grew because of high prices in the first place, which are made worse in no small part for import costs.
Re:World War III (Score:1, Interesting)
You may laugh now, but it won't be so funny when you're out there on the battlefield, screaming illegally copied (and then translated) jokes at the enemy.
Re:The US can't give a foot here. (Score:3, Interesting)
What it actually is about is hampering competition. Company A claims some trivial patent so company B cannot use some trivial foundation to base its research upon without paying company A more money than it has for the actualy R&D.
That's not innovation, that's quite the opposite thereof. And countries without a braindead version of IP laws will quickly take over and overtake the US. Because every researcher worth his or her salt will flee the US towards countries where R&D is headed by scientists and not by lawyers.
Re:dvd's cost a quarter in shanghai (Score:1, Interesting)
The rest is the costs for production, salaries, etc... Most of it is wasted on bullshit names to try and make a polished turd sell.
Get a clue and some idea about movies and the movie industry. I AM inside the industry, been there done that. most of the behind the scenes people are paid very little compared to the incredibly BS paid to these no talent hacks that could be replaced with better talent for far less if some fricking senior producer (read that as the money/managenemt) did not demand "brad pitt must be in this!" because he thinks that brad pitt movies are money makers.
So no, cutting prices by 1/50th will NOT hurt the little guys on the set or editing, only the wastes of human flesh like tom cruise will get "hurt".
Piracy in China (Score:1, Interesting)
On the other hand, the three DVD stores in my neighborhood, as well as most of the DVD stores I've been to here, sell only pirated material, for between 9 and 16 yuan (1-2 USD) per disc. The market is flooded with DVDs, for about the cost of dinner for one person in a neighborhood restaurant. This is in the capital- in the countryside, DVDs are undoubtedly cheaper.
Obviously, it undercuts the domestic market for films. On the other hand, only about 100 films are released to mainland theaters every year, and ticket prices are around 50 yuan per person.
Frankly, I think the Chinese do have an obligation to crack down on piracy. On the other hand, American and other foreign film companies have obviously not been able to enter the market legally, while reaping what they consider to be a reasonable profit. Therefore, let sleeping dogs lie, why don't they? The movie companies won't sell anything unless they drop their prices, and they won't or can't. At least now, they've built demand for foreign entertainment in China. Oh, wait....
Re:dvd's cost a quarter in shanghai (Score:5, Interesting)
I would be very surprised if you managed to find a legal copy of a DVD in China, outside of Hong Kong and Macau. I don't know what the price would actually be in China, but I do know of the situation in Russia, because a couple of weeks ago I was speaking to a member of the Russian trade delegation at an IPR conference. In Russia, a legal DVD of a current Hollywood DVD release costs about one month's average wage. It's no wonder Piracy is rife.
That same person made the point that the world's biggest exporter of pirated DVDs, software, etc, (based on customes seizures) is the USA, but the US government doesn't seem to see that as such a big issue.
Re:dvd's cost a quarter in shanghai (Score:3, Interesting)
If you don't want to pay for it, don't watch it.
"based on customes(SIC) seizures"
Of course, not all countries take equal measures to counteract piracy, so that doesn't really mean anything.
Re:dvd's cost a quarter in shanghai (Score:3, Interesting)