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China Slams US Piracy Complaint
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. "
Strangely all the DVD shops I know of in Shanghai are closed today. There's still street vendors here and there however.
I imagine they'll be open again soon, but it shows that China cares to some extent.
..export lots of low quality counterfeit products, Counterfeit yes. Low quality no. Many products come of the *same* production line with a slightly different logo (no serious retooling). Many "bootleg" CD's are printed from the same masters. The stuff is good. And cheaper. Also some of it is literaly stolen from the factory floor.If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Piracy is such a way of life in some Asian countries that sellers blatantly sell copied DVDs and CDs on the streets without any perceived concern they could be arrested. The police completely turn a blind eye. In Thailand and Malaysia it's so blatant it's ridiculous. They even have many DVDs you cannot even buy in the respective country due to not being released or even banned, films banned or censored by the Thai censors are regularly available completely uncut. The sellers do nothing to even hide what they're doing. This barely happens period in Europe or North America, why? Because the police actually crack down, close down and prosecute bootleggers. You may see the odd market seller but that's it. Interestingly Japan has created an expensive limited edition culture that you'd think would help piracy but instead people prefer to own official merchandise.
However if you say the world court has jurisdiction over US citizens, over the supreme court, then you are subjecting them to a court that doesn't recognise those rights. Not that they might not have a similar set, but the Constitution is pretty clear on this point.
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.
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?)
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.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?