Slashdot Mirror
China Seizes 13 Million Pirated Discs
TechFreep writes "The Chinese government is waging a 100-day battle against software and media piracy, the largest such effort ever conducted. After launching the effort on July 15, Chinese police and copyright officials have raided 537,000 illegal publication markets and distributors in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Liaoning Province. Of these, government officials have closed down 8,907 shops and street vendors, 481 publishing companies and 942 illegal websites." This article in China Daily quotes vendors of legal media products gushing over their increased sales.
537,000 illegalmarkets and distributors? I know there are a lot of people in China, but damn, can that possibly be right? If they bust everyone, the US could lose its coveted "most behind bars" status.
Where else are we going to see blurbs like this on DVD covers?
full text:
The Chinese government is waging a 100-day battle against software and media piracy, the largest such effort ever conducted.
After launching the effort on July 15, Chinese police and copyright officials have raided 537,000 illegal publication markets and distributors in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Liaoning Province. Of these, government officials have closed down 8,907 shops and street vendors, 481 publishing companies and 942 illegal websites.
Two of the largest pirated media operations in Liaoning Province, one located near Shenyang's Sanhao Street, the other in the Science and Technology Park of Liaoning University, were among those targeted.
These two centres provided over 90 per cent of all pirated compact disks to the city residents, said Wang Hongyu, head of Shenyang Anti-Pirated Enforcement Team. But now you can hardly find any pirated products there.
The crack down was initiated by more than 10 ministries and national departments, including the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Security, the State Administration of Press and Publication, and the National Copyright Administration. Each of the 13 million illegal CDs and DVDs that were seized up to this point in the raids were destroyed on September 16th.
It is suicidal for America to not tie very strong IP enforcement to its trade agreements with countries like China. Most of what we produce domestically is IP from music to code to drug designs. We are at an inherent disadvantage then, if we allow them to dump tens of billions of dollars of cheap crap in our stores, but allow their locals to run wild with our IP.
I don't like it, but that's just the way it is.
If you want to reduce our dependency on IP and strong foreign IP laws, go start a manufacturing business that produces in America at rates that can replace China and Taiwan.
Until then, I am glad to see China stepping things up, as it means we aren't getting shafted so badly anymore.
Oh, don't forget this article that states they were going to send out one million spam warnings to spammers. One million spammers? Here in the United States, it seems to be 9 or 10 parties that create 99% of the spam. Why is it so different in China? Is one in every thousand Chinese citizens a spammer?
Perhaps this is just another law that China will use to silence people (like I mentioned here)?
Speak out against the government and have your apartment ransacked for pirated DVDs. They find them everytime and you don't have to worry about a trial -- you were ready to distribute them! Makes the government look good and invites companies to come to China. Win-win situation for the government!
My work here is dung.
I hate it when the media misuse the word "pirate". You'd think Slashdot could at least get it right.
Illegal copies sold at retail are counterfit copies, not "pirated copies".
Piracy is when you copy content yourself for free. With piracy, no one profits off someone else's hard work.
Counterfitting is when someone runs illegal copies and then sells the copies for their own profit.
It's a subtle difference, but an important one.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I say if we're going to bring down communism we should do it via undermining their contries authority and showing them now the non-commies have it...
China is not a communist country. They are an authoritarian fascist regime.
The soviet union with Lenin was an example of something a bit more communist, and Cuba regime resembles communism even more.
All of them share some degree of authoritarism, but that is not a needed or unique characteristic of a communist country.
Aside from the clarification... why would you want to bring down communism in another country?
Do you think that the autodetermination principle is not a good thing to respect?
It's one thing to choose to trade with countries with which you share ideology, but trying to force other independent countries into doing things the way you do, looks pretty authoritarian itself. And it would be hilarious to do that, in the name of democracy.
Counterfitting is passing it off as genuine. If the customers knows it is copied and still buys it--that's just for-profit piracy.