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China Concerned About Internal Copyright Infringers
sfled writes "Audience members at a recent movie preview had ID card numbers stamped on their theater tickets, were videotaped entering the lobby, and had to part with cellphones, watches, lighters, etc. as they passed through a metal detector. Why the big fuss? Because China's movie makers, artists and other creators of intellectual property are finally realizing that China's content-piracy industry doesn't just target imported movies, music, etc. Story at The New York Times, "free" registration, etc..."
I'm not sure why the above is insightful -- what is the link between pirating American movies and stifling Chinese creativity? I'm not sure whether them cracking down on piracy of American movies would have any effect whatsoever on their own "fledgling media."
Money which you don't have in the first place canot be lost or stolen.
The most that happened is that a few CEOs and executives didn't take home a bonus because the revenue for that year was slightly lower.
Yeah I'm sure we'd all be much better off economically if Hollywood billionaires were a few billion dollars richer. In any case, the idea that piracy in China represents "theft of billions" from American companies is pretty ridiculous since it assumes the people who buy pirated videos there would pay much higher prices for the "real thing." Probably a few of them would but I doubt you'd see billions if piracy in China suddenly stopped.
Cracking down on the Entertainment industry where it is already heavily controlled and regulated to give an advantage to domestic product is one thing...
But they could much more easily walk into all the larger corporations in China (foreign or domestic owned) ask to see their current corporate license for Windows or any other major enteprise software, count the actual number of desktops (or employees using computers)and let the floggings, fines and hangings begin.
Copying a 20$ DVD is the same as stealing 20$ from the company that made it.
Would you lend someone $100 as easily as you would 5 DVD's? You might, but I know many who wouldn't.
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
This is been covered many, many times before, but:
1. If I pirate a movie I gain a movie (surprise!). Net change in company's revenue: 0.
2. I don't buy or pirate movie. I gain no movie, and company gets nothing.
3. I steal a physical copy (DVD) from company. Net gain for me: 1 movie. Net loss to company: cost of producing said DVD.
4. I buy the movie. I get a movie. They get my money.
Pirating (not that I endorse it) only causes a real loss if you would buy it if you couldn't get it illegally.
Now the average, urban, Chinese person (who has a yearly income of about $800) can stop buying cheap pirated movies and can, instead, spend a week's wages to buy a commercial video. That is, provided he/she was not planning to squander that money on food, clothing, or shelter.
Those living in rural areas, where the per-capita income is about 1/3 that will just have to sell a family member into slavery if they really want that video.
Maybe before whining about the evil Chinese pirating videos and software, you should consider what their incomes are compared to ours.
I was waiting for the inevitable Chinese people don't care about piracy, everything from fake watches to Windows are available in the streets of Hong Kong.
Does it not seem weird that most people here defend KaZaA et al as an opportunity to distribute material, but point an angry finger when Chinese people make copies of US films?
Just because they steal with a camera, and you steal with software doesn't make you any less of a pirate.
So lets get off the anti-Asian rants and show a bit of consistency. Either both are bad, or both are a chance for artists to reach an audience they otherwise would not.
Of course, IMHO they are both pretty insidious.
Has the intellectual moral high-ground stopped me downloading? Umm....I best not answer that.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
3rd - depriving of profit is not "stealing"- it's depriving of profit.
Points 1 and 2 are right on, but I have to disagree with the above.
Our society gives authors and creators a sort of 'implied contract'; they create, and we grant them copyright. Sure, no one signs anything, but none of us signed the constitution (which grants copyright authority to Congress) either. There are certain social obligations that everyone is bound to, whether or no they agree. In effect, you (through your legal institutions) have promised copyright, and in return the author has created something. Once the goods have been delivered, you are at least somewhat obligated to fulfill your side of the deal. Breaking this social contract is slightly different than merely depriving a corporation of profit. You can't give the author back their lost effort. On the other hand, I deprive McDonalds of profit every time I drive by their shitty restaurant and thank god that I'm not stopping.
Personally, I think it'd be good if China cracked down on its piracy, domestic and foreign. Of course, when it comes to piracy concerning foreign movies (especially American) of course many people'll pull that "Oh what does Hollywood need more money for" shit. Well, it's not really your place to decide that Hollywood shouldn't get money for something it paid to make-- and it doesn't change the fact that it's PIRACY, plain and simple. It's the same piracy that hurts smaller, independant filmmakers who need the money-- the people who really do need the money --and that is the same piracy that needs to be stopped.
To tell the truth. Most american movies are pathetic, propagandistic, patriotic "shit".
Sure chinese movies are somehow propagandistic too. But they don't force their shit on the rest opf the world like americans do. So, to get straight to the point: I was always happy to realize that a us product sucked when i checked the pirated version. Realizing that after spending 10$ at the box office is on of the worst things i can think of..
It seems that despite almost no support on slashdot of any other intellectual property protection scheme, when it's the Chinese pirating American stuff it's a horrible crime. But when it's Americans pirating anyone else's works, including those by other Americans, it's something that should be protected. Make up your goddamn minds people! I personally think that the United States government has it's collective head up it's ass, but the premise for copyright is very well intentioned: give the producer of a work a temporary monopoly for their contribution to society. Back on topic... when you can honestly say that you support the MPAA, RIAA, and every other four letter organisation ending in AA it'll be fair for you to say that the Chinese pirates are wrong, but for the moment I suspect that most of the people posting about the evils of China are guilty of the same crime they are condemning.
E pluribus unum
I think that they think there is a difference between Chinese culture (including their films) and the hollywood pap. When using internal flights in China I have to watch Chinese films (the only time I watch them) and I am often surprised at how good they are. If I were Chinese I would be proud of the Chinese film industry. I would also want to protect it.
I do not think it is really posible to protect a film as it has to go public at some point or it serves no purpose. At some point the film will get into the hands of the ripper, he will get the first release and have it on sale as quick as the original reaches general release. He normally has Hollywood films before they are released but that is because there are more crooks in Hollywood.
The Chinese do more to combat the rippers than the Americans do, but there is less respect for IP and more of an attitude of product in China. If Hollywood would sell a good product at a fair price the rippers would be out of business.
As for the valuable creative works, they are already doing it and they know that soon Hollywood will rip their ideas off just as they have always done in the past. Like with Yojimbo = A Fistfull of Dollars and Seven Samurai = The Magnificent Seven (I know Akira Kurosawa was Japanese but the point is still true). I think the most insulting thing is that Hollywood does not even make good copies of other peoples work.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Hey, you've posted this before.
5 14 674
4 44 9517
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=43066&cid=4
And, apparently you think exactly the same of India:
'http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42305&cid=
I personally think that it's 100% off topic, and you've shared your experiances more than people care.
There are more than a billion people in China. On what basis do you consider the Chinese movie industry "fledgeling"? Is it the fact that you never see any?
I guess you probably consider the Indian movie industry as fledgeling too, for the same reasons.
No kidding, theft has to be the most abused concept of the latter half of the twentieth century.
I'ts not just IP either. Think about what we've gone through with welfare. It took forever to get to the point that welfare moved from these welfare stores of the thirties with their dehumanizing proselytizing to food stamps to simple cash payments. Once the stigma was finally being stripped away the rhetoric immediately turned to THIEVERY! Those fucking thieving nigger bitchez is stealing frum our fragile economy. Dear Lordy, them thieving snakes are gonna kill us all!
Now nevermind that the money that disappeared from a bankruptcy like Enron could have supported hundreds of thousands of crack dependent welfare moms who could have at least been there for at home watching the kids instead of taking some menial position outside the home to gratify the expiatory fantasy of the revenge seeking TV audiance.
And nevermind the fact that the scandanvian nations are total welfare states. That's not thieving because everything is "fair" there.
Now we've gone from mothers caring for children as thievery to accessing information as thievery.
I don't believe the Chinese are sincere about this crackdown on intellectual property because the Chinese intellectual tradition is a tradition based on a surprising degree of anonymity in authorship. One can argue that this is a product of political expediency, but over so many centuries that seems to be a bit of a stretch. Moreover, many truly proud Chinese authors have historically denied their authorship because they felt it was the honorable thing to take a humble position with regards to their authorship even when there was abundant evidence attributing their work to them.
And then there's this thing about the adoption of open hardware cores and the Dragon CPU. That doesn't go well with a new hardline attitude towards intellectual property.
Wrong. Copyrights benefit the creators of the movie/music, etc. If somebody doesn't want to altruistically create something to "benefit the people as a whole", that's their right. If they want to sell their ceration, that's their right. As soon as you start removing copyright, you're essentuially stealing from those creators, which will cause them to completely and totally stop creating. Read Atlas Shrugged. You'll get a good idea of what'll happen when the gov't says, "your intellectual property is no longer yours... it belongs to "the people".
Try that in my store. If somebody steals something saying, "You wouldn't have sold this anyway. So, really, I'm not stealing from you", I'll break their fucking legs.
But it's that taking away part that I fail to see when it comes to movies or software. If I, purely for the sake of discussion, download a movie from the internet, how is that stealing if, at the end, the owner still has the original?
Very simple. By doing so you are depriving the owner of income. That income is often required for the inventor to recover the investment he made in the production of the original of what you have copied. A movie these days can cost up to $100 million to produce. A new drug can cost $1 billion to bring to market. Who is going to invest that if they cannot recover their costs? By obtaining that illegal copy you are not only stealing that income from the author of the original, but you are also depriving us of future works by reducing the economic incentive to produce new inventions.
It is time that we start waking up and realizing that we as a civilization would not be where we are now had we not copied other people's invention.
And what if nobody had produced that invention in the first place? Would you have anything to copy?
The purpose of intellectual property law is to give added incentive to inventors and authors to produce new works. In the case of patent law there is the additional covenant which requires the inventor to fully disclose his invention in exchange for the patent grant.
In the grand scheme of technological progress a 20 year bar on copying an invention is insignifiact. The invention isn't going away; it will be available for copying.
In the late 1600's England realized the benefits of the social contrat of the Patent and Copyright, and made it law. The results were fabulous - man had not materially changed the way he lived since the development of agriculture. At that time the number of books that were available numbered in the thousands. Now the number is in the 100's of millions. The availability of this knowledge is due both to the copyright (encouragement of authors) and to the inventors who devised the hot metal Linotype machine, the web fed printing press and the Fourdriner paper making machine (all patented), advancing the old technology of papermaking that was essentially unchanged in the 5000 year period between the invention of paper by the Chinese and the invention of the patent in England.
Patents are by their very nature monopolistic. They go against everything that is considered "holy" in a capitalist economy.
And exactly how is that? Monopolies are a very natural outcome of a capitalistic society. This country has had a long tradition of monopolies including Standard Oil, Microsoft, etc.
The fact is that patents have a net effect of DECREASING monopolies because they put a specific time on the exclusive right of the inventor. The alternative to not having a patent system is to go back to the pre patent ways of doing things, that is protecting the technology with trade secret and licensing agreements. Trade secrets have NO period of duration. This is why some companies choose not to patent some inventions; for example the formula for Coca-Cola was never patented.
EULA's in and by themselves can't and shouldn't be able restrict my behavior after the act of purchase.
You are REALLY showing your ignorance here. EULAs are a CONTRACT between you and the software vendor. If we as a society decide that we are going to abandon contract law, pretty much all commerce becomes impossible.
Imagine somebody had patented paper hundreds of years ago and charged horrendous license fees to produce paper. It is highly arguable that such a copyright could never have been in the public interest.
FYI, A patent and a copyright are very different things, the first process of paper making was developed thousands, not hundreds of years ago, and the fact is that processes for making paper have been patented many times over the past 400 years with no apperent ill-effects.