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The Unauthorized State-Owned Chinese Disneyland
rmnoon writes "Apparently Japanese TV and bloggers have just discovered Disney's theme park in China, where young children can be part of the Magic Kingdom and interact with their favorite characters (like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Seven Dwarfs). The park's slogan is 'Because Disneyland is Too Far,' and there's even an Epcot-like dome. The only problem? Disney didn't build it, and they didn't authorize it. What's more? It's state-owned!"
Take that Eisner!
A communist country has no respect for Disney's intellectual property?! Say it ain't so!
(Not that I, a Libertarian, have much respect for Disney's IP either.)
Today, Disney. Tomorrow, GM. Get used to it.
..that the war between China and the United States is more of a legislative and economic one fought with dollars and cents. China and the Taliban don't need to take us by force, they simply need to take over our economy. China by manufacturing and selling unauthorized patented and copywritten equipment and now theme parks. We do all of the research and development, and they sell it at cost with no reimbursement, thus destroying our system of innovation, and allowing them to turn the world back into the stone age. The Taliban will take us by causing us to put all of our tax payers dollars into ammo.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Here's a picture from 10 April. Look at #2.
I've heard the Tiananmen Square Tank-Dodgems are really popular, although I think most children go to see the big cuddly cat, Chairman Meow.
Considering Disney has made a big deal about people getting tattoos of Disney characters, I can't imagine this will go over well. Actually, I didn't really believe it until I saw a couple other sources.
fishy ain't it...
wow... just wow.... I guess the Chinese really can copy just about anything.... for a culture that is striving for innovation and an independent economy..... I would just think that copying your rivals wouldn't be very conducive to that, but thats just me.
Last time I checked, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was in Grimm's Fairy Tales, a compilation of European folk stories that existed long before Walt Disney or copyright/trademark laws. As the dad of three, it bugs me more than a little when Disney Inc attempts to own childhood fantasy and retroactively copyright/trademark/turn-into-disney-IP all kinds of things that were part of the childhood psyche-scape long before Uncle Walt was even born.
never ask a question you don't want to know the answer to
Chines version of Disneyland may be better than the original one. Chinese are good in building in best way. So this can be a question for original Disney regarding the qulity.
-= Difference Makes Identity =-
I'm sure that every chinese person was going to go to the real disneyland, but with this fake one, what's the point? No need to spend thousands of dollars that you "have," no-sirree!
It *is* a Small World(TM) after all!
In America, Disney owns the government. In Soviet China, the government owns Disney!!!
Or something like that.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
I'll bet they charge people to use the park too.
These are the same bastards who take half of Yao Ming's paycheck, remember.
They don't deserve Yao's cash that he sweats for and they certainly don't deserve any profit from ideas that someone payed with time and hard work to create.
Of course, this is why I'm not a socialist or communist and China still claims to be despite backwardness all over the place.
I don't think you understand. China is a country. A large one. Disney is a company, one whose wishes are only enforced because some countries (eg. U.S., European countries) have agreed to use their police and border guards to enforce Disney's wishes. Clearly China doesn't agree to use its police/border guards in that way, and unless a small company has a remote chance of taking on a large country (be it economically or militarily), Disney really doesn't have much say in the matter. (granted, futuristic SciFi novels about corporations having more power than countries are interesting to read, but we're not there yet)
US: You cheated!
China: Pirate...
China: Put it away, son. It's not worth you getting beat again.
US: You didn't beat me. You ignored the rules of engagement. In a fair fight, I'd kill you.
China: That's not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it?
China: The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can't. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you'll have to square with that some day. And me, for example, I can let you drown, but I can't bring this ship into Tortuga all by me onesies, savvy? So, can you sail under the command of a pirate, or can you not?
P.S. Ron Paul bumper stickers are available at cafepress.com.
The domain name is bs-amusement-park.com, BS? BS!? Come on, at least give us a challenge to poke fun at the name, this is too easy. :P
Carbon based humanoid in training.
After watching a special on CNBC the other night regarding Zippo (The famous cigarette lighter company) and their battle with Chineese rip-offs... and now this... I'm beginning to realize at some point in the future there will be dire consequences for China's blatent lack of respect for international intellectual property laws (among other things). Consequences as in trade embargos... or even war. Better wake up China! The giant will ignore a mouse nibbling at his ankle only for so long....
Why is Disney now part of the United States? There are more disneylands around the world than here. They sell more worldwide than in the US. They're an international conglomerate that profits people in many, many countries and many areas.
It's like Ikea. Ikea may have started in Finland, but they employ and enrich a heck of a lot of Americans. Toyota might have started in japan, but the US would take quite a hit if they suddenly wholesale pulled out of here.
The world is not a bunch of governments ruling over these little corporations who spread their tentrils forth for the motherland. Companies superceed governments. Sony exists as much in England and Europe as Japan, and does as much R&D around the world as in their original country. Sega was started by an American in Japan, and whose japanese-sounding name is actually an abbreviation for SErvice and GAmes. We think of Burger King as an amercan company because it started here. In Thailand, they think of Burger King as a Thai company, because the people who work there are Thai, the people who eat there are Thai, the people who make the Thai commercials for Burger King are Thai. Any given piece of electronics is likely to have bits designed in the US, EU, China, India, and many other places.
Companies are not part of a government. They are their own entities in a parallel system.
The ______ Agenda
This is an interesting expression of the saturation of global culture, and how, despite the perceived barriers between easter and western societies, these gaps are slowly dissolving. What i find most interesting is that, as far as i can tell, the park is so popular - legal issues aside, this does imply within the Chinese population some tension between the west and the east has been eased. Although this is perhaps not the best place to find shared cultural values, it is a start, and i think it would do well for Disney not to castigate the government of China, but rather try to reach some sort of compromise or understanding. Unfortunately, being that they are a corporation, it is unlikely that they will see anything but a lawsuit. One can hope, but that hope is likely misplaced.
Unathorised by Disney. Illegal, no, unless Disney has registered a copyright on all the contents. They probably have registered copyrights on some of the stuff but probably never thought that someone would copy the WHOLE of their theme parks!
So, I've heard of bootleg DVDs, bootleg CDs, bootleg Rolex watches... but I think this has to be the world's first bootleg amusement park!
We can only hope we are witnessing the death throes of state-sponsored protection of the antiquated intellectual property regime that has been built up over the past several hundred years.
You can't "own" an idea anymore. It's absurd to even try in a world with instantaneous global communication networks. We got a little taste of this two nights ago with the digg 09:f9 revolt. We see memes getting remixed all the time over on 4chan /b/.
Welcome to the future. Your contributions to the culture of humanity will be mercilessly dissected, reshuffled, caricatured, parodied, paraded, criticized, subclassed and recycled.
This is progress.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Actually I hope you're already used to it. GM already lost a case - several years ago - where a Chinese manufacturer ripped off, bolt-for-bolt, panel-for-panel, an entire car and then released it to market BEFORE GM did! Brazen as hell. Toyota has also had problems in China for theft and such. I think when foreigners wake up to the fact that there's not really that much money to be made in China they might not be so enthusiastic about jumping in. For instance, huge numbers of cars are made over there, but everyone's killing each other on price. The Chinese are happy about it (they get new factories, trained workers, cars, etc.), but I don't think the foreigners are making any money.
Plus, as I referenced yesterday when commenting on this alarmist post about how the US may soon have "no comparative advantage" - China is not all it's cracked up to be.
Thing is, no one's making money in China, except for a few well-positioned people who can grease the right wheels. Nothing to see here, move along, it's the same old mercantilism and cronyism we find in all non-free markets. The sheer balls of the park manager telling the camerman they "newly invented" the characters ("It's not a mouse, it's a cat with big ears!") is classic.
This guy should be the new Iraqi Information Minister.
--
learnjapanese.poddedcell.net -- Step Up Nihongo, learn Japanese
Just wait until they can fit all of Disneyland on one bootleg HDDVD or BluRay Disc.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
What? You mean that doesn't happen in free markets? I'm sure Bush and his Dick will be surprised to hear that!
I hate printers.
For how long should disney really have monopoly on Winnie the Pooh for example.
I think it is time that the copyrights from 1920 or so expire for the enjoyment of all.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
It looks like we'll have resurrect Sonny Bono and install him as our new ambassador to China.
What?
This just in: The chinese government doesn't give a damn about western patents and copyright. Film, as they say, at 11.
I bet the government built the fake Disney as a way to avoid further international embarrasment related to overcrowding at the real China Disney in Hong Kong.
The crowds swelled beyond belief during the Chinese New Year in 2006. Parents were so distraught that they started throwing their kids over the entry gates. There were some hilarious videos of this floating around out there. Can anyone find a link?
OBL has openly written that they are out to destroy our economy. He wants us in the same boat that Russia was. So far, W. is helping him out.
As to China, they are trying to position themselves to own the world economy and then control countries in manners that they see fit(a MUCH larger USA with a nastier attitude). It is not the stealing of ideas that is doing this. It is the fact that they have tied their money to our money at a fixed rate. If it was allowed to float, then it would have increased in a big way by now. Others have dredged up the typical neo-con argument that this helps the economy. And for a short-term, they are correct. But it destroys the manufacturing (read tax) base. Another argument is that China holds a huge amount of our cash. And they will laugh if it falls, so long as they are in control. In the past, America had large natural resources to fall in during those times. Not anymore. What this means is that when China wants to pull the rug on us, they will be in control. And that is going to happen in about another 15 years (or less).
W.'s going to argue about the copyright and patents is almost akin to chargin Charlie Manson with litter AND making a big deal of it. It totally ignores the real problems.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Of course, the US government is more or less controlled by companies, including Disney. Thus the WTO complaint mentioned in the article. It'll be interesting to see if the US government is willing to actually do anything serious over this though.
It seems pretty common sense to me that would be the model China is striving for. First you play catch-up to your competitors (imitation), then you work on surpassing them (innovation).
It helps that everyone is paying them for the first part and probably has sent the expertise and machinery and whatnot over there as well because of the cheap labor.
Japan itself has started out in the steel industry as a low-end producer (rebar) that the US steel giants didn't mind because that part of the business of low-end and low-margin that it let them "focus" on the high-end high margin stuff. This allowed Japan to get a foothold in the door and they are now one of the largest producers of steel while the US steel industry is in the dumps.
I presume you're talking about "them" calling "us" and saying "we've decided not to buy your government-issued debt anymore." Problem is, what would they invest their 1 trillion in government funds in then? It's not like there are that many - if any - safer alternatives? Euro bonds? Uhhh ... what was that long-term growth rate again? Yen? yeah right, the Chinese? Swiss Francs? Uhh ... sure it's a hard currency, but how much of it can you liquidate when you need to? Dollars are still the best place to park savings.
Also, China exports vast quantities to the US - they'd never cause our economy to "crash" if they could help it. It would create massive social unrest over there (and they can barely keep a cap on what they've got happening even right now). China's going to have many, many significant, huge, social problems in the mid-term. Their "one country, two systems" thing is inherently unstable and will fail. If China ever copies the fine pre-handover Hong Kong example which the British left the world, then move over U.S., because we're going to get trounced. In the meantime, China will simply remain a cheap place to manufacture lower-technology goods. I include computers and HDTVs in the "lower-technology goods" category. They've got far to much to lose to damage us that way.
But one of the above posters is totally correct: The real threat - the one thing that could bring us down - is ourselves. FDR was right about fear. If the US goes down, it'll be because we did it to ourselves.
--
for more on this topic, check yesterday's post.
-- Step Up Nihongo (learnjapanese.poddedcell.net)
The Happiest Prace on Earth!
Looking at some of the photoes, they look like they are taken of random parades or people who are dressed up, and some of the buildings shown appear to be models or mockups.
Lots of more or less well know characters appear throughout it all, and it all look really cheaply made (in the bad sense, those costumes are baaadly made).
I can't help but rate this very high on the fake-o-meter, at least until we get more from a well known source.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Get used to it.
Nothing a good, structured tax/tariff structure can't correct with regards to allowing shoddy imports to undercut quality. The idea is to reverse the damage done by that region of the world to our domestic industries (who seem to have done better in terms of quality when allowed to build domestic). Just enough that companies get the hint not to use countries like Mexico and regions of the world such as Asia to undercut domestic labor- which would be used as a retraining fund.
Today, Disney. Today, GM
What do you expect from a part of the world that seems to have forgotten quality, but how to become a large black hole for industries of other regions of the world? Certainly you cannot expect quality for a place like China.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Government-issued contracts for rebuilding previously state-owned assets in warzones certainly aren't decided in a "free market." No real capitalist would likely go into such a place anyhow, because they are highly concerned about preserving capital and war is the worst destroyer of capital ever.
Bush and his cronies are NOT operating in a free market. They're a bunch of rent-seekers who couldn't make it in a free market - or got lazy and decided to use influence to create money, instead of hard work.
It's because people allow themselves to be hoodwinked into believing that they are in a free market that we have trouble. Take, for instance, the people who claim the California energy deregulation was a failure of free markets - when in actuality it wasn't a free market at all.
--
learnjapanese.poddedcell.net -- Step Up Nihongo
Yes. But I guess having trade marked Disney characters is still infringing on trade marks.
Yeah, I'm sure that China will pay just as much attention to those WTO rulings as, say, the U.S. has to the internet-gambling rulings.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
That wasn't said, although I can see how, if you go in with the mindset that you will find some way to bash Bush in anything, you would infer it.
The point is, in China, that's all there is to be had. That's certainly not the case in the US.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I heard they downloaded the Disney theme with bittorrent.
I don't know what to do when standard anti-socialism and anti-IP /. dogma clash. Who's side are we supposed to be on on this one.
...and unless a small company has a remote chance of taking on a large country (be it economically or militarily), Disney really doesn't have much say in the matter.And this would be a good reason why I laugh at the so called International Court systems. If an American company manages to make a profit through ANY type of help by the government everyone in the world screams. China blatantly rips off a corporation and "nothing can be done." WTF? If the WTO and other organizations are that weak, why the HELL to we keep kowtowing to every stupid little demand they toss our way.
This would be a good time for America to slap huge tariffs on all Chinese products until this type of blatant crap is stopped. If Wallyworld has to pay $500 for that cheaply made American flag, I'm sure they'll find someone else to make them than the Chinese.
Let's just say "Screw China." They've never been our friends and they are working on destroying us economically and eventually politically. That's why they try to buy our politicians. How come everyone gets upset when the US tries to influence an election somewhere else (That's IMPERIALISM!) But when they try to buy the Clinton White House, no one says crap about it. How come THAT isn't Imperialism? Oh, cause they're a Communist country why they couldn't POSSIBLY have any Imperialist plans.
Sigh... Sorry... Button pushed...
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
Intellectual property is a Take-Away. That's one copy of Vista Ultimate, and a scale-replica of Disneyland to go!
As long as they repeat GM's unprofitability, the world has nothing to fear.
There's nothing a rewrite of the Buy America law won't fix if you can hoodwink the business lobby. Of course, you could make it possible to give them a tax break if they redirected money from their foreign arm to the domestic one - since all they really care to do is to starve the UAW bound side to bankruptcy.
Do that, and you might be able to take care of the pesky manufacturers from the Land of the Rising Sun by closing those two loopholes as well.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
My feeling is that any economy built upon intellectual property is a house of cards. Sooner or later, someone just decides not to play. They simply declare themselves as rich as you are. It's like a bubble market: it only has value as long as everyone buys into the delusion that it has value ... then it goes "pop!".
If a country with all the manufacturing infrastructure and a country with all the legal IP rights to that tech have a conflict, is there really any doubt who wins?
This is obviously the definition of chutzpah.
war with china? no way.
any politicians who even suggest that need to be voted out REAL damm fast before they get us all killed!
china has so many people they could arm them all with rocks and sticks and STILL kick the worlds collective ass. nukes? china has them too. and alot more of them i'd imagine.
dont even suggest war with china. i dont want to die.
and trade embargos? ha. yeah right. know what china NEEDS from the world? squat.
know what we need from china? just about all our crap is made there these days. from pc's to plastic crap. they make it.
as the biggest dog on the planet. china can do WHAT EVER CHINA WANTS. with 1.some Billion people. and a goverment that has total control and loyalty. dont mess with china.
captcha: populate
They've never been our friends
Who the hell is?
This tops all the other pathetic emulation imitation monkey-see-monkey-do crap I've seen from that region. This makes me literally physically ill. Don't they have any identity of their own? Do they have *that* much of an inferior complex?
Granted, the translation of whats happening in the video could be a lie, but they claim the President of the park said that they were not copying Disney. Really now, that guy needs to grow some balls. In his situation, "Heck yeah we copied Disney! What the hell are they gonna do about it? This is China!" would have been a more fitting response. Despite the long history of the stories themselves, those were pretty obviously characters based on the Disney versions. Except Shrek... that'll piss of Dreamworks. And who owns Hello Kitty?
Not only that ... China is a country WITH ITS OWN LAWS. And as demonstrated on things much more serious than Disneyland they give a royal crap on US' laws (eg: personal liberties, freedom of speech/press), they couldn't care less about the differences.
Mickey's image and most Characters from the 20s and 30s are in the public domain in a lot of countries around the world. With the obvious exception of the US and the countries strongarmed (or not) to extend the copyright laws.
It would be ironic to find ppl outraged at this and just replying with a "well tings are different in China" whenever somthing about the Chinese Firewall, and its enforcements are posted.
That's an interesting comparison between a company and a country. Nevertheless, consider a scenario where a cheap electronics company in China calls itself "Intel", has the same logo, floods the market with vastly inferior chips and most of all, state supported. Now what do you think Intel/US can do about this?
Let's just say "Screw China." They've never been our friends and they are working on destroying us economically and eventually politically.
Why stop there? Maybe it'd be time to throw the whole region and the nearby subcontinent in with them for certain industries. When all the damage has been cleaned up, maybe consider them on a policy that gives US citizens a more comfortable transition. There are some things that economists just will never understand in terms of humanity - and they would do well to at least try.
That's why they try to buy our politicians.
And the finishing touch is to have this wolf in sheep's clothing make sure nothing gets in the way of globalization.
Sigh... Sorry... Button pushed...
Don't be. The less junk coming from that region of the world, and the less of them stealing jobs and university slots, the better.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
There is nothing legally wrong with the Chinese government doing this; they're a sovereign country, they get to decide how much copyright and trademark law they want to have. Now, the US government can say "poor ol' Disney is suffering, we'd like you to stop this, so let's make a deal". But arguments like "it's not right" aren't going to be very convincing.
They're particularly unconvincing given that, by all rights, Mickey Mouse ought to be in the public domain by now. Other nations can have completely reasonable copyright terms and Mickey Mouse would still be in the public domain. It's the US that's unusual and unreasonable by having protected Mickey Mouse for another couple of decades through the Sonny Bono copyright extension act.
The public domain and limited copyright terms, two basic American rights, have been under attack in the US for the past century, and they have been replaced, effectively, with unlimited ownership of intellectual property. That's the real problem we need to address because that's what's really un-American.
Hey Disney - you just got owned!
Now here's a menacing image: http://www.japanprobe.com/2007/01/fake-donald-duck .jpg
I remember having childhood nightmares that began a lot like that...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Hmm, most Disney characters are based on stories that have been in the public domain for centuries and the ones they did invent, should have been in the public domain decades ago.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Hmm, well, I guess Disney has about as much right to Snowwhite as Coca Cola has to Santa Claus...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What this means is that when China wants to pull the rug on us, they will be in control. And that is going to happen in about another 15 years (or less).
I doubt it. If there is one good thing that king jr has done in his utterly fucked up administration, is convice the world at large that we are armed and irrational. While china COULD try to screw over the reigning military superpower, is it really wise to poke a stick at the mad dog with all the nukes and carriers? 15 years from now, we might be poorer, but will will still have lots of bombs and missiles. No, they will continue to grow themselves in an ecenomic fashion. They are really a capitalist autocracy, as opposed to anything communist these days.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
China can't stop an orbital nuclear attack, or even ICBMs or sub-launched nukes.
:)
0 6/06/06/pollution_problems_cost_china_over_200b_a_ year/a s-most-polluted-cities-cx_rm_0321pollute.html1 1/content_511271.htm. html
China has no Navy - not one that can survive a handful of US subs. Our cruisers can take them out from beyond visual range.
** That's why they haven't even invaded little baby Taiwan. **
We know where all their major production factories are and can be done with them with a handful of strike bombers that they can't even see, much less shoot down. Failing that we can hit them from orbit.
What is more likely is that China, if sufficiently provoked, will fsck us up economically. But they'll play that card ONCE. That will bring the offshoring universe crashing down as Americans learn how vulnerable it makes us. We'll not make that mistake twice and China will lose its biggest customer. We'll produce our own stuff from then on and China will choke and asphyxiate and get sick and die in its own industrial filth.
We could move in and take over, although the pollution clean-up and dead body disposal might make that unfeasible for decades.
Oh and for those stupid enough to argue with me:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/20
http://www.forbes.com/logistics/2006/03/21/americ
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-01/
http://www.dbc.uci.edu/~sustain/suscoasts/krismin
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Oh, well, it must be Mecca for Slashdotters!
This is unbelievably ridiculous from a country that is mostly anti-western values. Couldn't they at least promote chinese culture and folklore in someway than just stealing IP in this way? China used to be so creative, inventive, and amazingly modern before the communist era. Now they just acquire.
news for nerds -- stuff that matters ?
Is there a "Made In China" sticker under Minnie's skirt?
i'd love to go see the freaky chinese version of disneyland. my bet is it's chockers with nationalist pride stuff. yes, the chinese are even more nuts then american's.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
In Communist China,..State runs the toons :)
Eclipse PDE and Me
Is this really worth the hassle? Surely, the Chinese govt can employ some poeople who can come up with some more creative and appealing and a Mickey and Donald? Unless of course their aim is to stick their collective tongues out in Uncle Sam's face post WTO complaint.
Actually, we're technically there... Look at the income/profit difference between Micronesia and Coca-Cola. While an extreme example, it helps illustrate that we appear to be at the point where the largest companies ARE making more money than many of the world's smallest countries.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I am not a lawyer, but aren't characters trademarked and not copywritten? Trademarks never expire.
The Shijinshan Amusement Park was built more than 20 years ago. Not sure if the PRC has established diplomatic ties with USA yet, yet alone intellectual property treaties. Also, twenty years ago there was practically not such thing as "intellectual property" in China (ah, the good old days). There was a very famous brand of candy from Shanghai named "Mickymouse", with Disney's Mickymouse as its logo. Later, when China opened its market to the West, Disney realized that in China, the "Mickymouse" trademark was legally owned by the candy factory, so it paid big money and brought it back. It was reported in the newspaper that many Chinese children cried that day as their beloved "Mickymouse" candy was no more (oh, the evil Americans)...
You cannot hoodwink them. They have seen a better margin and a better chance of exploitation. The only thing that can stop a publically listed business from following the scent trail of higher profit in the name of an abstract concept is nuking the stock market. After all it is what drives this in the first place.
The reasons for Chinese imports being cheap are twofold - complete lack of environmental control and use of slave labour. Both can be dealt with by putting the relevant legal frameworks in place.
The framework for the environmental is very similar to the one established for food imports. All it requires is application to all goods. No exemptions. Licensing of importers and mandatory certification. Same as for food.
The labour is actually a comparatively minor addition compared to the rest as far as modern manufacturing is concerned. Badly payed and badly treated labour delivers bad quality product (if that was not the case we would have still be owning slaves like the ancient egyptians).
Once the primary cost factor which is the environment is put on equal footing you can compete with Chinese on quality, efficiency and innovation. Just look at the Wiki page of the same Cheery motors. They do not have any of their own R&D. If it was not for European R&D (and to lesser extent american R&D) they would be dead straight away. Add to that mandatory environmental control to which European (and American) businesses are subjected on a day to day basis and they will fade into their internal market for the next century.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Here's the official English web page for the park:a sp
http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/ChinaIn/about-e.
To be honest, it wouldn't have been to hard to "discover" the park. It's connected to the Beijing subway, it's been open since 1986, and it's rated as a AAAA tourist attraction.
I think it is time that the copyrights from 1920 or so expire for the enjoyment of all.
Yeah, not bloody likely. Disney is the reason no copyright will ever expire again. Since they have "property" that would expire once the latest copyright extension they purchased rolls around, they have no choice but to purchase another one.
And why should these things expire? Since it's your "intellectual property", shouldn't it be yours forever? And when "you" are a company, "forever" can actually mean forever.
sic transit gloria mundi
... supposed to be News for Nerds?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Perfect timing Disney had to pirate theme HongKong Disneyland and rename Adventureland to Pirateland.e /home?name=HOMEPage
http://park.hongkongdisneyland.com/hkdl/en_US/hom
When I was living in Taiwan, which isn't China but it's close enough, I encountered this sort of thing constantly. It permeates Chinese culture in ways few can imagine. Hell, I think it's just a fact of life all throughout Asia, it's almost the same in Korea, and common Japan, although it's a little more subtle there. It really is just a way of life.
Some shop opens up somewhere selling a particular kind of desert and becomes successful. Within 6 months there are maybe a dozen to be found within that city. Someone designs a particularly striking advertisement and it's only a matter of time because imitators appear. A news agency updates their look and almost over night everyone else does to.
You see it in small things too. My wife corresponds with an online community of Taiwanese living in the States. She has a blog, as many do. She has a fairly distinctive writing style which suits her personality. Inevitably someone came along and started copying her writing style. It got to a point where this particular girl started writing about the very same things my wife had written about previously.
China adds yet another dimension to this absurdity. Most people there are poor. We hear all this talk about the booming economy, the burgeoning middle class and all that. But the fact is that most Chinese are poor. And I mean living in poverty to a point that the so-called poor in the US haven't experienced. What does this mean? They can't afford all the shiny, impressive and absurdly expensive products made by foreign companies. So what have some enterprising Chinese done? They've made cheap, inexpensive knockoffs. Most are pure garbage, but they cost next to nothing and provide some level of the functionality found in the expensive foreign product. Some people may even be fooled into thinking they've purchased the real thing.
This sort of thing used to really frustrate me. Especially when it affect my work directly. At the time I'd think about how great it was that no one could get away with this sort of thing in the US.
But then I realized two things. First, it does happen in the US. Companies here just happen to be more careful about how they go about it. Look at Hollywood, and worse, look at the game industry. It's only logical that when people see something that has led to success they try to emulate it. The easiest way to enjoy some of that success is to resort to copying.
This leads me to the second thing I realized. I've come to think this is a good thing, within limits of course. There's a point at which a company or an individual has just gone too far and measures need to be taken.
Nevertheless, this sort of thing keeps innovators on their toes. It forces them to be competitive. Like I mentioned earlier, copying is a way of life in Asia. It means that people aren't sitting trying to figure out how to go about suing the offending party. They aren't whining to the government that someone has just ripped them off. Instead, their moving on to something else. In some cases, as it was with us, the frame of mind is one of trying to raise the bar further, to stand out from the imitators.
The other advantage here is that the imitators are slowly improving their own skill sets. They're being exposed to new ideas and learning from them, even if they don't realize it at the time. But it's something, over a long period of time that I believe leads to real progress.
The reality is that in most cases the imitations will never be anywhere near as good as the originals. So the ones actually producing something unique will always have the advantage. So as long as they don't get lazy they should be fine. If their in a situation where they're being seriously threatened by those copying it's almost certain they're doing something wrong.
I'm not suggesting a free-for-all where people can copy with impunity. Patents and copyrights are reasonable to a certain extent. I just feel that in some cases things have gotten out of hand. A real free market shouldn't have the absurd level of protectionism some companies seem to expect.
Disney Messenger: Yuan and IP laws. ....
King Hu Jintao: [Laugh] You rode all the way from California for yuan and IP law?
King Hu Jintao: You bring the crowns and heads of former kings to my country! You mock my queen! You threaten my people with slavery and death!
Disney Messenger: This is blasphemy! This is madness!
King Hu Jintao: Madness? THIS IS CHINA!
*kicks Eisner into pit*
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
GM?! Do you have a torrent for a Chevy Van? Have a new broadband connection that I was told could handle just about everything.
Copyright is about respect. China clearly has not respect. You show them who's the boss! Just don't hurt yourself in the process... i.e. don't forget that they own our national debt.
Welcome to global economy.
...Mickey Mouse Windows comes out of there? If techies keep saying Windows is a Mickey Mouse OS enough it will come true it seems.
Table-ized A.I.
Does Disney really need more $
Top Ten Changes At China's "Disneyland":
10: Every conceivable surface is painted red.
9: Skeletons, vampires, and other scary images replaced with pictures of famous American capitalists.
8: The "Mickey Mouseketeer Club" replaced with "Children Of The Chinese Communist Party"
7: Replaced the cars in "Autopia" with T-72 tanks
6: "Rocketship" ride has been replaced with "Nuclear Missile" ride.
5: Replaced the pirates in "Pirates Of The Caribbean" with American Capitalists.
4: Replaced mechanical puppets in "It's A Small World" with brainwashed dissidents singing at bayonet point.
3: Inserted subliminal propaganda messages into the "Tiki Hut" song.
2: Renamed Disnyland restaurant "Mickey Mao's"
1: Doubled the MSG content of the corndogs.
----
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
China's goin' down...
What the hell is futuristic about this? We have been there for a long time!!
Who the hell do you think conquered India? The British? Well, yes, I grant you they were British, but they sure as hell weren't the British Government. It was the British East India Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey), who were big enough at the time to make Ford, Coca Cola and Microsoft look like a crocked hat.
Note in the battle mentioned above, John Company fought against the Indian Princes and the French East India Company.
The equivalent today would be Halliburton fighting in Iraq against the Iraquis and Shell.
Modding this up would introduce Americans to a bit of history!!
I think this is a menu advertisement.
Speciality: Sweet Sour Chinese Duck
Have a look at this page. They have Shrek as well. I think he is fairly recent. http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=1678
You've seen how ugly things can get when OIL interests are threatened... now somebody has screwed with The Mouse! This could make Iraq look like a game of freeze tag!
Who do you think was the major driving force behind the creation of the WTO? So the US pushes for a trade system that favours them (Duh) and then cry when someone turns it around against them. Well then, the US shouldn't have been so short sighted when it was pushing for all those free trade agreements!
This would be a good time for America to slap huge tariffs on all Chinese products..
Uh huh, and of course China wouldn't respond, right? You should take a look at the trade balances between the US and places like China and the EU and then think about that a bit more. If you have difficulty with the math, ask a grownup to help.
It's a good job you're not a politican. Even Dubya isn't as stupid as you.
No, we have no internet connection in the park. What do you want with IP?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A "minor" quibble. The world today does make use of slave labor, extensively. Ever heard of "sweatshops"?
Read and educate yourself.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
I believe Oxford owns the copyright to the King James Version. America pretty much ignored that and it is in the public domain in this country. That would probably be the biggest IP disrespect in the history of mankind.
I think IP respect between countries is necessary for economic ties between countries and for the greater good, but a country doesn't have to abide by another country's laws if they don't want to. However, agreeing to being in the WTO may change responsibilities.
The WTO did not exist in the 1700's when we chucked the copyright of the KJV.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
True in principle, of course. As a sovereign nation, the US is perfectly free to start trade wars with whomever it wants.
But a good rule of thumb for statesmen, is to show restraint in starting wars that you cannot possibly win.
In trade wars, size is all that matters. If a big county and a small one start imposing trade sanctions on each other, both countries are hurt, but the smaller one is hurt more. If there is a big enough difference in size between the two sides, the strategy can actually work. US trade sanctions on Cuba hurt Cuba a lot, but have no significant impact on the US economy. Therefore, the US has been able to keep up the sanctions for about half a century. (But it should of course be noted that this strategy has failed to achieve the primary goal of unseating Castro, even after all that time.)
But in the case of the US vs. Cuba, the US economy is about 300 times as large as the Cuban one in terms of GDP.
With China, it's an entirely different ball game. The relevant figures from the CIA Factbook are:
That's a considerable advantage for China in terms of population, and almost parity when it comes to economic strength. Add to this the fact that China's percentage of the world's total GDP is rising, whereas the US percentage is declining, and we can skip directly to the bottom line:
There is no way the US can win a sustained trade war against China.
And it's not just China, of course. There is a long list of countries that the US is trying convince to change its copyright laws to better suit US corporate interests. In fact, as the BBC article US copyright lobby out-of-touch points out, the majority of the world's population lives in countries that are being implicitly threatened with trade sanctions by the US over intellectual property issues.
To those of us living outside the US, these threats are just silly. The US economy accounts for 20% of the world's GDP (ppp adjusted), the rest of the world has 80%. Who do you think will win the trade war "the US vs. the rest", if push comes to shove?
When a British newspaper ran the famous headline "Fog over the channel, continent isolated", the empire was already on the decline, even if nobody had noticed it yet. The US threatening the rest of the world with trade sanctions to uphold its views on intellectual property, smacks of just the same attitude helped hasten the demise of what once was the greatest empire on earth.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
...situations like that prove that the western culture dominates the planet, and pretty soon it will take over (if not already) all of the eastern countries.
If a country with 5,000 years of recorded history can not offer a decent amusement park for its citizens, then we have won.
"While an extreme example, it helps illustrate that we appear to be at the point where the largest companies ARE making more money than many of the world's smallest countries."
This has been the case for hundreds of years though, e.g. the British East India Company, whose income sometimes dwarfed that of many developed (by the standards of the day) nations. Note also that using military power (or the threat of it) to enforce the trading rights of rich business lobbies is something that goes back at least as far as the Phoenicians, and the Romans and British Empire did on a regular basis, so it's not something that was suddenly invented by corporations in the 20th century. This is why most (possibly all) wars throughout history have, when one cuts through the usually religious or nationalistic rhetoric that leaders use to justify them, actually been a case of one bunch of wealthy, powerful people sacrificing large numbers of the expendable non-wealthy to amass even more riches and influence for themselves.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Here's a big middle finger to the idea of copyright. WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!
our minds and the minds of our children that they have gone beyond what any one company or small group of people has any sort of right to own.
Also, the creators of those characters are all either rich or dead, so what does this park cost them?
The reason for their extemely low prices is simple supply and demand. Labor is dead-cheap because there is so much of it. I got a beautiful painting about an hour outside of Guangzhou for about a buck twenty five. The painting is a very large, rougly seven-feet wide one. For the record, the painter was not a slave. It's just that that's the price he can charge, since there were literally thousands of others I could have gone to.
Now, I'm not saying that there isn't any slave labor in China. I have no idea; there probably are some instances of it, just like there probably are instances of it here in the US. But it is simply not what drives their economy. It's not even remotely related to their success as an economy.
Pollution is another matter. I've never been to a traditionally smoggy city in the US (say, Houston or LA) but Guangzhou had a blanket of smog a couple hundred feet above the surface at all times... I can actually remember the air being "heavy." It was a releif to get out to countryside, so we could see the sun again.
groupthink: It's good for self-esteem.
Disney has enforced his wishes. To me that sounds as they alrady are more powerfull then countries.
The fact that it doesn't happen like SF stories tell, doesn't nmake much difference.
SF writers think about power and think tanks and guns. Companies think money and profit.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
All issues are binary. There is just more than one issue involved here. Both sides can be wrong here only because there is more than one issue at stake, and both are on the wrong side of at least one of them.
Thus, one should perhaps think less about supporting one of the sides in this story and more about picking from it one or more issues that you feel strongly about.
No.
But I have been to plenty of places with similar labour costs. In fact, I have lived in one for a while.
While what you are telling is correct for a painting, textiles and other "light industry", labour is only a minor part of the BOM for an heavy industrial product like a car, bicycle or modern toys. Environmental control on the other side is. It may account for 40%+ of the costs of plastics, 30%+ of the costs of metals (those pesky sulfur emissions controls, water quality control, cleanup of land destroyed by open mining, etc), 70%+ for some paints and coatings, 100%+ for some electronic components and so on.
Let's apply that to a pedal cycle - you have around 1 hour labour costs during initial assembly (everything including tires and all components), rest is BOM. The BOM difference between Chinese plastics, metal, tires, etc and _fully_ western Europe makes due to environmental regulations and mandatory acceptance for recycling for a bicycle can be close to 100 pounds (200$) at the moment. Compared to that the labour cost difference is negligible. If we look at any other product that makes heavy use of metal or plastics we get roughly the same proportions.
Further to this, if we look back at "light industry" like clothing the difference in quality between sweatshop labour and labour working in better conditions is also quite apparent. Compare a shirt made in China with one done in Bangladesh, Cambodja or Turkey. The quality difference is striking and these can nowdays often compete on quality alone (if the market is not perverted by "branding").
If China is left to compete on price of labour alone with the BOM costs equalized by mandatory environmental controls it will lose straight away to everyone else on quality alone.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
It may be outrageous, but it's not much to do with copyright. You can't "copyright" a theme park, a character, costume, a voice, etc. You can copyright a work of art, like a book, a movie or a song. However, Disney surely has registered trademarks in China, which do cover all their characters. (Thus the ubiquitous (R) symbols on Disney products.) And trademarks last forever, if the owner keeps them in use.
Of course, every movie Disney has made is available in China on DVD for about 50 cents each, which certainly is copyright infringement, but that's another issue.
I wonder if the owners of that park would complain if you paid your entry fee with counterfeit Chinese money?
Maybe in Capitalist China copyright on Mickey Mouse _did_ expire?
First, sorry for my poor english. I'm a chinese.
I've heard of this news across the internet(japanprobe.com, engadget.com, of course slashdot.org) these days. Thank you japanese so much "unveiling" the big secret. You really are working hard. We know our problems. We are developing. We've been paying more and more and more attention to IP issues.
Franly speaking, no country can promise there is no piracy. the point is, the attitude we treat piracy. you can see that in china. so far, there have benn many patents all over the world. we are hard to develop us without any piracy but we are trying our best do this. during this period, we need understand. as you know, there are 0.9 billion farmers and thousands millions people who are not well educated. Could you understand us and give us some time?
And, japanese guys, why do you guys post this news across the internet all over? what are you thinking about? This really is a damn thing.
That old tired thing. Listen, the article ends up trying to point out other elements the story "stole" from. Let's just face it in the course of a few thousand years of human history, we have started to run out of original stories. Most anything could be found to be some sort of "derivative" work from the story perspective and the article you reference totally ignores the comparison between The Lion King and Hamlet (and try to tell me that one doesn't exist, they even did a twist on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead).
The animation similarities are a bit harder to argue, but I do not think it would be appropriate to call the thing stolen. Even, Tezuka had early work "influenced" by other characters. I've always said the folks at Disney have never had a single creative thought, but to say they are outright thiefs would just be wrong. (Note: If the company holding the copyright on Kimba wanted to they easily could've sued Disney for infringement. The lack of such a suit makes me question if it was really theft at all.)
I don't get why anyone is surprised. This is just modern Soviet-style Communism. At the same time that it decries the EVIL west and it's kapitalistic society they want it's economic power and happiness so much that they emulate the very things that some of us would define as our worst kapitalistic sins. Is there a more "evil" company than Disney?
Of course, like all communist governments, they get it wrong.
As an aside, I enjoy Asian cinema, Korean films the most. I've given a few HK films a shot and something that has been often impressed in my mind is that the Chinese people in these films are portrayed as the most materialistic culture I've ever seen in my life. I'm apt to take this with a grain of salt, as our own Hollywood does a woefully inadequate job of actually portraying everyday life in America. But, these films are made for some audience right? How on earth could a Communist society like China be at all concerned about material wealth? Do they not have all they need?
Ya I can see all of the 'Hilljacks'(Hillbilly Jackass) now "Them chiyenees has gots a fake disneey land... Mama faynted, git me my shotgun!"
I dont care what the reasoning is it will be BS. The fact is this doesnt effect their US business because I dont see americans flying to china to go to some disneyland clone. If the public here gets pissed because some chinese kids get to go to DL then we all deserve the swriling toilet bowl this country has become.
To the parent. Do you hate China? Would you rather we kept all of OUR money in OUR country? How bout you think of the cost of not doing business with them huh? Yeah youd be happy about that for one hour until you couldnt go out and by your everyday conviences anymore. You sir are a Racist.
Disney cartoons are everywhere, but the per-capita income of China discourages Disney to set up shop there. How are the chinese kids to ever meet Mickey, have some innocent fun. Should chinese children not have any fun, because their country is poor?
At least we know why all those Chinese "tourists" were taking so many pictures.
There's an official Disneyland located in Hong Kong so it's not that far.
Maybe three hours by plane from Beijing. The park is probably modeled
after the HK one.
The British East India Company had it's own army
I wonder why they did this at all since China already had an Official Disney Theme park. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-09/1 2/content_477116.htm
Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Seven Dwarfs are Disney characters from the 1930's. The only reason they remain protected in the US, is that Congress is intent on making intellectual property eternal. That was not the intent of our founders. Every time Disney feels that the IP created by their long deceased founder is threatened, Congress extends copyright. I'm definitely NOT a fan of the Chinese government, but I'm not real sympathetic to Disney in this matter.
[Insert pithy quote here]
You had me up to the 'except' part. Since when does MS worry about legal issues?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
If Disney wants to push the matter, all they have to do is stop having their crappy merchandise made in China.
That wouldn't stop China from continuing to make the same items, but then they would be responsible for trying to sell the same amount of stuff that Disney does.
Since Disney controls their own stores and theme parks, China wouldn't be able to open stores and such selling their products as Disney could then claim trademark infringement and other goodies to prevent the selling of these knockoffs.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It did indeed, but the "official" British armed forces were also frequently used to further its interests, e.g. when the British fleet was used against China to protect the British East India Company's opium trade.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
It's the Beijing Shijingshan Amusement Park
t ml
. html
Here's the official website
http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/
Epcot dome
http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/ChinaIn/huanle.h
Castle
http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/ChinaIn/huanle-b
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Sure, if your country has a strong enough dictatorship they can make everyone ride a bicycle because the country doesn't produce enough cars for everybody. But if your country doesn't have a strong enough government to enforce a cultural revolution and a significant part of the manufacturing infrastructure has moved overseas, then you'd better accept some setbacks in negotiations with other countries.
Until you resurrect your rust belt, it's your IP for their industrial goods.
Actually Badly paid and badly treated labour delivers a great product - assuming most labour fits into this category due to an over-abundance of supply.
Evenly badly paid is way better that not paid.
The problem is that we all too selfish and want stuff cheap in real terms.
I'm quite convinced, if IP would be stocked in China, they'd be as apeshit about it as the US is now. They're not against IP, they're against someone else owning IP they want to use.
Why do you think they'd be different?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How about a nearer analogy, we would have still be owning slaves like the early non-native Americans.
Ownership of slaves was far more widespread in the U.S. than in Egypt. Egyptian slaves had far more rights than American slaves, they could even own property. Slavery was rare in Egypt until the Greek period (due to invasion), which may indicate a decline in morality related to Western (forced) influence.
To protect our intellectual property!
How many of us would love to feed that Disney rat to a giant feline? One bite at a time. :-)
Here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Taitei
Yes, it can bully smaller countries into compliance. But how do you want to bully a country pretty much all the other countries depend on? How do you want to bully someone who is pretty much your manufacturing power? What would happen if China said "up yours"?
The WTO would stand there and look quite lost. What do you want to do? Punitive taxes? The only ones that would be hurt by this would be US and EU based corporations who have their manufacturing in China. Force other countries to cease their trade relationships with China? Ditto.
You can't bully someone who you depend on.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
To illustrate a war against China.
The US and China go at war. First day, the US make a million POWs. Second day, two million more. Third day, five million more. Fourth day a call from the chairman. "Well, Mr. President, do you give up?"
You are aware that China has maybe the biggest military machinery on the planet? Not to mention simply by far more human material than anyone else? And since they don't have to worry about the next election, a million dead or alive ain't an issue. There's plenty more.
How the hell do you want to win a conventional war against such a nation?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And don't forget that this was not an isolated example.
Both the Dutch and British East India Companies issued their own coins - about as much of an indication of sovereignty as there is.
The Hudson Bay Company used to be a slightly larger land owner than it is now - basically half of North America, including big chunks of what is now the US.
The history of these companies is fascinating, check it out some time.
Zapsavings: Simply calculate how much energy efficient bulb
O.K., I have to call a certain level of bullsh*t here. Last year, during the DevConnections in Orlando, my wife and I spent some time at EPCOT and the China pavillion had a full model of the new Disneyland, and my mailings from Disney (credit card and stock mailings) all mention it.
Is this more akin to Tokyo Disneyland being owned by Orient Land Company?
I think its more, Disney sanctioned, but owned and operated by China. Think "franchise".
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I don't get it. Why are Japanese TV and bloggers so interested in the Disneyland in Hong Kong? There's already a Tokyo Disneyland that has been around for many years.
Further to this, if we look back at "light industry" like clothing the difference in quality between sweatshop labour and labour working in better conditions is also quite apparent. Compare a shirt made in China with one done in Bangladesh, Cambodja or Turkey.
Your point here was lost on me... Which of these choices is supposed to be the "better conditions" ?
And which has better quality?
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
The US ows CA over $1B for the softwoods tarrifs - that's been settled for over 5 years now.
Antigua has won round 1 & 2 against the US for Online gambling.
The US is pursuing WTO sanctions against China.
Business as usual, if it's in our favor use it; if not, ignore it. I would love for the WTO to take the new complaints the US filed & hand them back saying "You can't start any new actions until you resolve the actions against you."
As for Copyright, it's a civil contract between society & authors - every country has the right to write that contract as best suits them & their needs. The problem is that the contracts are no longer writen to balance the needs of the society against the authors, it's viewed solely as an entitlement. I say go back to requiring registration & then requiring an increasing fee to maintain the registration at 10 year intervals. Hey, if a patent costs $5-10K over the course of it's 20 year life, why shouldn't a copyright cost $30-60K to cover it's 120 year lifespan?
While corporations certainly do exist and are located in multiple countries, your implications that they are above and beyond the legal or ethical reach of each local country assumes facts not presented as a base to your argument.
The parent post disregards the very nature and essence of what a corporation IS. A "corporation" is a FICTION defined by a government relieving individual employees and owners of liability and prosecution from most (but not all) of the potentially bad things the company can do. [I know "fiction" seems like a terrible choice of words. But it is actually the legal term used in law books and law journals. Look it up yourself.]
If the president of General Electric could be held personally responsible and jailed when one worker in one plant out of many across the world went on a killing rampage, or when a consumer was accidentally killed by a GE delivery truck, then there would be precious few organizations larger than the family business.
The creation of the corporate fiction has enabled the creation, operation, and growth of all of the large corporations in the world.
Whatever your political view, the corporation (and the peoples within the corporations) have raised the standard of living of billions of people. After more than 100,000 years of history, we may for the first time be within 100 years of a time when no one in the world is malnourished.
Back to the parent post topic, a corporation can only operate within a country subject to the laws in that country. That is why the executives at Google were so upset at the choice between "doing no evil" (by protecting dissident human rights and withdrawing from doing business in China) and the "evil" choice of obeying the local laws (and also protecting advertising revenues from that country and rationalizing that a "greater good" would be served by giving Google's services to the people not in Chinese labor camps).
In the case of American and China, current tensions over intellectual property are a natural byproduct of continuing negotiations between the countries (bilateral trade agreements and treaties) and the evolving international standards being slowly embraced by all major trading partners (through the WTO also known as the World Trade Organization).
Between the United State's dependence on imports to keep inflation down, and China's dependence on exports and growth to prevent unrest and revolution, neither country can bully the other into doing anything they really don't want to do. In addition, any moves that are made are rarely made quickly. Only when China develops more intellectual property based businesses like America's Hollywood or India's Bollywood will they see the value of protecting intellectual rights. Until then, we get a lot of Slashdot articles on the topic.
Considering the amazing progress China has made since the 1970's, it is entirely possible that their next generation of leaders may improve the protections of human rights, property rights, and intellectual rights. We can only hope.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
In a battle between Disney and China, who do you root for? Crap, this is like Hitler vs. Stalin. Can I root against both of them?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Or, at times The Party District Commissar Goofs YOU ! or whatnot.
Read radical news here
You have got to be kidding me...are you that xenophobic?
UN Report says over 34,000 Iraqis killed in 2006
34,000 people per year / 12 months per year = 2834 1/3 people per month
As of October '03, the calculated death toll for 9/11 was 2,752
For the record, the average loss of Iraqi life per month in 2006 exceeds how many people died during 9/11. And that's just 2006.
Makes you wonder who really has the right to worry about terrorism...
:(){
It seems to me that lots of people confuse the trade deficit with the national debt.
The trade deficit doesn't have anything to do with the government other than that the government can prevent it by imposing tariffs and restrictions. It simply means that more goods come in than go out. This is a concern to economicists because it means that other countries are getting richer at the indicated country's expense. This is offset somewhat by the fact that the US dollar is hoarded by many people outside the US as a "reserve currency," but if others decide they have enough dollars or the dollar falls out of favor then this compounds the issue.
The national debt is simply treasury bonds and the like. They don't give their bearer any direct power over the government in question. You can't collect them early or put pressure on the government that issues them other than by declaring that you will be refusing to buy them. Government bonds are always paid becsaue the govenment prints the money. This does influence inflation, of course, and has a host of other consequences, but they aren't the same ones as when an individual consistently engages in deficit spending.
I am not sure that I see all that much difference between China and America at this time (and I am an American). The truth is that normally, we are none-interference WRT other countries. But every so often, we get republicans like Reagan and W. who insists on playing with other countries to help our businesses out. During those times, we are like China will be (at the current moment, they are not). But the difference is that we are self correcting in relatively short times (within 8 years). China can take 1-2 generations to correct their actions.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You forget though, the battle was a simple one-- the British soldiers, well aware of the competition, went out and started kicking the signs of the competition.
The proclaim of the soldiers was something along the lines of, "Who's going to use a delivery service with a kicked sign? Nobody, that's who!"
China is not bound by US copyright laws, however it is probably bound by international treaties - so let's be specific: in this case it is Berne Convention that says: "50 years after author's death". Or 50 years after going public in case of anonymous or pseudoanonymous works. It is not clear to me what happens if the IP owner is a corporation. How does it die? (or is there some other article describing such case?) Anyway the important point is that the time period given in the treaty might not be the same as the one in US laws.
China has essentially the exact same imperial bureaucratic government it's always had. They obscured things a little with some ideological talk, but the place is the same - there's a ministerial class that runs things and makes idiotic decisions that kill millions of peasants, and you have to bribe officials to get things done.
The marxist-like trappings they put on the government after Mao came to power might have been legitimately believed in by a few, but only very few and only very briefly.
Micky Mouse is an American icon. Maybe less today, but when I was a kid (yes, speak louder young grasshopper so gramps can hear you!), the Mouse was more US than applepie (which is based here, you stole that from my grandma!). The Mouse was what symbolized the US for us kids. Hell, I had a Micky piggybank and I was damn proud of it!
Disney and all around it is what is good and holy in the US. It's the "nice America". The fuzzy, warm, clean and shiny US spirit, all that's good and nice about the US. Yes, it is a very crummy corporation, yes, Walt himself was a slaver. But that's not what you see when you're a kid. You see the good, the nice, the funny figures and you dream about that wonderland of joy and goodness those figures live in.
The very holy grail of good ol' Uncle Sam. And we loved him and his Mouse.
Micky was a hero! He came to us on TV and in comics, and he was fighting the good fight against all those crooks that tried to bully him around, he was the li'l guy who always came out as the winner, despite not being a big superhero, he was just so 'normal' and he had his troubles, and yet he always managed to live through it, have a good time and succeed.
I doubt it is much different in the US. So I guess this isn't about copyright and IP. It's about the Mouse.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The translation was authorized by King James around 1608 or so. I'm just going off of what I've heard.
IIRC, there's actually no evidence that King James ever did authorise it. He did give his blessing to an effort to make an "official" new translation of the Bible, simply to counteract the spread of Bibles being imported from Geneva by Calvinists who had a pesky habit of questioning his "Devine Right to Rule". However, if memory serves, when the new translation was finished some 12 or 14 years later and appointed to be "read in churches", old King Jameie had long lost interest. It was all a political exercise, seemingly.
Slave labor? Yes, most of the toys in the stores are made using those in China's prisons, and we know that China's prisons are full of people placed their for their beliefs more often than not.
What a convenience! Get rid of the detractors and those dangerous house-church Christians by putting them in prison. While they're there, we can use them to feed American (and other) corporations that want cheap goods. Those poor saps in the U.S. are actually paying us to keep political and ideological prisoners! We love the United States of America!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Or several trade issues with Canada. The US tends to be a bit more pushy when it's them lodging the complaint though.
Cambodja has working trade unions and working labour law. So does Turkey and so to a lesser extent does Bangladesh.
While, their working hours and norms may sound excessive by Western Europe or US standards they are considerably lower than the rest of East Asia and especially China.
As a result their textile products cost 10-20% more on average, but the difference in quality is staggering. When "field tested" on my unruly junior pair of Chinese shorts falls apart at the seams or is ripped to shreds on a bramble in 3 months or less. Shoes - 2 months or less. Jackets - one season or less. And so on.
Compared to that the production of any of these countries (as well as the production of Eastern Europe which also has silly labour costs) lasts several times longer - roughly to the point where he outgrows them.
So no surprise that we ended up operating a strict "no-Chinese" policy regarding any clothing and shoeware. It ends up being more expensive once depreciation is taken into effect. Same as with most other Chinese light industry products.
One of the reason why the Chinese light industry succeeds is the perversion of the free market by branding. They are the primary producer of counterfeit clothing and shoeware in the world. And the only reason it sells is because people like showing off with a label. And this is all silently covered up by the state as it is usually run by local state officials. Same as the Disneyland in the original story. If this is revoked as well as the unfair advantage of running the environment into the ground and they have to compete on quality alone they fail straight away.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
So now their visual images are the ones embedded in the public mind as the ONLY images. That doesn't mean that they belong in the public domain. Disney still owns the images!
If the park in question was using completely different images of the characters then no one would have raised an eyebrow. But using the images created by Disney means they're infringing as long as Disney holds a valid copyright.
Yes, Disney used folk tales for their storylines. Good hook, that. Good business decision. But not evil by any means and they're not claiming all rights to the folk tales now. They took familiar stores from the public domain and used them.
Ok, the more recent stuff is bad. Very bad. If it is proven that they stole from others copyrighted works then they should be penalized. But lumping that in with blatant infringement is just confusing the issue.
Bad China! No biscuit!
For the unauthorized "China" in Epcot. Did Disney license that from the Chinese, I think not!
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
404'd
the big red ape reared it's head...
This discovery is just the tip of the iceberg. I shouldn't be telling you this, but the Chinese have actually built a full-scale replica of the entire United States in a remote corner of Hunan Province. The model is complete down to the smallest detail - it even includes a replica of you, sitting and reading this article right now. But for some reason the replica of you is dressed in stiff nylon clothes cut in a vaguely 1950s style. In fact the whole place has the feel of a faded Polaroid photograph; the children's smiles are slightly too wide, the food looks slightly too waxy, and of course everyone speaks slightly out of sync...
A Fun fact is that Mickey and a lot of Disney characters are not Copyright, they are Trademarks, which is like copyright on crack.
Basically this means that the character's will be the legal property of Disney until the sun consumes the earth. Possibly even later.
They would respond. So? The US produces more than enough food to survive, and can quickly start producing steel and other items that we now buy from China. The US was self sufficient for 100 years, and should still be today. The only thing we can't really substitute is oil from the middle east at this time. Sure, there would have to be a lot of sacrifices, but it would be worth it to make a point. Our trade balance with China is out of control, right? So who gets hurt more if people stop trading? The buyers? Or the sellers?
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
"The reasons for Chinese imports being cheap are twofold - complete lack of environmental control and use of slave labour..."
On an aside, many snooty Euros says "the reasons for the US economy being more efficient are twofold - complete lack of environmental control and use of slave labour..."
China has the ability to take out carrier battle groups now. Sure, we could retaliate and missile their cities-they can do that right back. They have the 200MPH russian rocket torpedoes and those fast low flying anti ship missiles, let alone just gobs of normal surface to surface missiles, including a lot of road mobile nukes. Those anti ship cruise missiles-realtime testing last summer, took out that israeli warship when they thought they were still invincible. Iran has them too, BTW, something to consider if the neoCONs decide to do a little "commandering and deciding" there.
Nope, the US has now been dropped down to the point we can really only fight "insurgents" in little pipsqueak nations without taking massive losses. And even there, with total armor and air superiority-you can see what is happening. They can't really hold much and need to stay inside walled compounds or take losses from small arms and IEDs. And their mechanized stuff is just slap wearing out, half of it is total junk now.
We still have bluster and tremendous firepower, no one argues that, but we are no longer able to threaten medium or large nations with impunity, either directly or implied. Now that might change back once the f22s and 35s are out there in huge numbers, but right now, nope. And china has shown they have the ability to get a diesel electric attack sub right in the middle of a CBG and not get detected-they did it not long ago, and they also have shown direct kinetic anti satellite tech as well as offensive laser tech. Those were *demonstrations* to the US to not push their luck. A huge part of their military focus the last decade has been directly applied to dealing with carrier battle groups, you can go google around and read up on it.
And with that said, I'd bet they have thousands of agents that could be activated inside conus now for sabotage, everything from the grid infrastructure to the food supply to what have you.. The media makes a lot of noise about the islamics, but it's the chinese who have infiltrated with a lot of dual use citizenry.
The rulers in china know full well that if anything happens to stop their expanding middle class that they will be toast, that's why they are going all over the planet locking up natural resources, and why they have been dealing with the threat of carrier battle groups, because they actually realize the 21st century is the century of the resource wars, and they aim to win. While we are debating to raise CAFE standards, they have bought up 20 more coal mines. While we argue over some sports teams scores, they have been signing 20 year contracts with major energy supplying nations. While the west farts around arguing over how much already rich movie distributors should make, they basically are moving in and starting to just about run entire nations in africa where the raw materials are. They are pumping out hundreds of thousands of engineers and technicians and exporting them right along with manufactured goods, while we pump out rappers and football players and "managers", while their business guys are signing contracts and getting results and building influence all over the planet as ours keep failing at it, because we have zip to offer any longer besides gussified up IOU's and grossly over priced and insane "IP" products, which are beyond a joke now.
And the main thing is, they could give shift one about world opinion beyond some token amount, they are going to do what they will do and aren't the least bit concerned over the consequences, because they perceive no threat to them over some total destruction angle, because it doesn't exist, MAD suicide is not an option, even for the most deranged western leader, and there exists NO credible conventional deterrent any longer.
Before you start ranting about chinese stealing your most loved american icon and copyright issues, get informed!
The park is not in any way related to Disneyland. The link of the story goes to a 404, slashdotted probably. Hell, even the domain (http://www.japanprobe.com) goes to a 404!!
The official website of the theme park (http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/) doesn't mention Disney, Mickey or any other Disney-related product.
Characters on the pictures that I've found are the 7 dwarfs but not Mickey or any other. It also has a castle and an Epcot-like sphere but that's it.
And even if they are the 7 dwarfs, what's the big deal? You have to admit this is news because the chinese are doing it.
I'm currently in Buenos Aires and I see Spiderman, Mickey, the power rangers and the most known pokemons in mall entrances almost every weekend, but I'm sure nobody is suing them...
It's scary how many of you people, always proud of having above-average IQs, react to a story like this one. What is left for the rest of the americans then?
Don't get FUDed by media!! Wake up!
I'm not chinese BTW!
Instead of posting links that don't work, you should post ones that do.
The Rat should just take his merchandising manufacturing elsewhere.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
"Other countries don't necessarily have copyright protection for as long time."
Actually, if they are a member of the WTO, they do. They just may not realize it yet.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
the copyright maximalists have just gotten another arrow in their quiver.
What, like this park has actually hurt Disney? Next thing you know the DDR will sue Disney for ripping off the Brothers Grim.
The "IP" warriors are in for a revolt and the HD DVD is just the beginning. Their measures are oppressive and don't really help out artists and creators. The people who created those Disney characters were paid less than union wages and they are all dead now. Yet, the local bakery can't decorate a cake with any of them without being sued. That kind of thing builds resentment. Enough resentment that people will be happy to see someone else giving the finger to the greed heads.
What Disney is really afraid of is that their characters will get stale and people will go out and make their own. They are careful to release their movies on rotating schedules so that every generation gets them, but never all at once. The magic of Disney is that a 100 year old mouse still looks fresh. If that freshness were lost, people would realize there's nothing really special about any of the Disney characters. This park in China goes a long way towards showing everone just how slavish they have been.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There was a bit in it about money: how a piece of paper and money were really just both pieces of paper, differing only by one of them being "blessed" by the treasury department.
Of course, I'm not doing it justice without the exact quotes.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Do you seriously think factories in Bangladesh and Cambodia have substanially better conditions than in China?! What, are the textile airconditioned or something?
Most interviews I read with insiders (on and off the record) said that no one consciously copied Kimba, but some of the animators quickly realised they were and began making jokes about it in the office. The better question is "Was there corporate mal intent?" I haven't ready any indication there was, and that the animators and writers may have consciously or unconsciously borrowed from Simba putting Disney in an awkward situation.
Straight Dope has the best answer to this (they talked to the animators no longer working for Disney):
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a991224.html
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
I don't think it being done under the auspices of the British East India Company means it wasn't done by the British Government, as the company was to a large part an extension of the government, created for the explicit purpose of exploiting trade with the east. It was pretty much a state-controlled company, but not entirely so, and is probably more akin to the USPS than Halliburton, except it had as influence on the government more like Halliburton.
The enemies of Democracy are
The picture references "a replica of Cinderella's Castle".
Funny that, as Cinderella's Castle is a similarly loose replica of Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.
Disney has some gall complaining of knock-offs, when most (all?) of their biggest hits are knock-offs.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Ok, I see lots of comments about the U.S. being dependent on China for products, that we owe them money, that they're buying bonds from us, etc. like that has *anything* to do with the issue here. Since when does this justify someone just blatantly stealing someone else's work or ideas. You can argue that Disney, the U.S., and anyone else has stolen ideas, work, and so on, but I have two comments to this.
1: Two wrongs don't make a right. (blah blah cry about it if you want.. it's true)
2: *HELLO* they didn't just make a Disney-like attraction with similar characters and ideas.. they just absolutely stole them. There's a big difference here.
Go ahead and welcome your new Chinese overlords. It seems like you losers envy them so much, why don't you move there and enjoy their wonderous nature. Oh yea..then come on Slashdot and tell us how it is.. or not.
...except in a country where the regime is corrupt, and the politicians took bribes to extend them
Now with this site being state run, do you think the Chinese Govt. is running around up in arms because all of the US based hits are constituting as a US based DoS attack from the /. affect?
BTW - Nice to see that this park was awarded the "Advanced Unit in Implementing the Birth Control Policy" Chinese State Award.
WTG Not-so-Disneyworld!!
The only way you could make this stick was if you required all people who use your car to sign an agreement that they'd only ever install Such-and-Such Company licensed components in their car. I can tell you right now, the day I have to sign a EULA to purchase a car is the day I buy a bicycle.
Anyone who knows the sat views or map of Disneyland/Magic Kingdom/DisneyParis.. etc, can see from the Google Earth View where the inspiration is from. Shijingshan in Beijing, China http://www.bs-amusement-park.com/
Max: "You mind if I drive?" Sam: "Not if you don't mind me clawing at the dash and screeching like a cheerleader."
"What the hell is a crocked hat?"
Old cricketing term, and what the French East India Company looked like after Plassey.
"You forget though, the battle was a simple one-- the British soldiers, well aware of the competition, went out and started kicking the signs of the competition."
Umm - where did you do your history!!! I am not forgetting - you have never learned! Did you not understand the basic fundamental point of the entire parent post? This was NOT the British Government supporting a company. In fact, the British Government was shit scared when they heard about it - they were worried about the expenditure which might accrue from military adventures in a distant foreign land. This was dreamed up and financed purely commercially, and went down in the books as investment.
Incidentally, the battle was by no means simple. 2,300 British and 2,100 Indians against a 50,000 strong army of the Nawab of Bengal, with a small detatchment of French Artillery. Normal odds for the British, but you can't make any mistakes when fighting at over a 10-1 disadvantage, even if you have turncoats working for you among the enemy.
I always thought that Simba == Hamlet minus the emo
The Disney characters seem to be confined to a small section of the park. The park's iconic characters seem to be cats with big pointy ears.
The Beijing park has Vegas showgirls. They didn't copy that from Disney.
It's an older park, from one of China's less creative periods. Remember, it was built after the crackdown on creativity towards the end of the Mao era, when China lost a whole generation of young creative people. That's over. We're seeing quite good design out of China today. The next time that park gets a refresh, they may well dump the Disney stuff.
petulant child is never good, especially when it's an entire nation.
damaged by dogma
I started to feel like we were getting there once I saw that Microsoft had its own currency.
ARE BELONG TO US!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not unheard of for a factory to radically change WHAT it makes. If you don't find customers for one product, you make something else. Factories have intrinsic value. Like shovels and hammers, and other tools, only magnified.
Now if you want to assert that there won't be any market for Barbie dolls, and what else can you make with the same equipment... There you've got me. You'd be able to make practically anything that only depended on plastic molds and coloring, and that's too wide a spectrum to guess. If you could add wiring and small electric motors (Do Barbies have that kind of thing this year?) you could do even more. Everything from doorbells (well, not the chimes, themselves) to miniature rockets. (Note that I did NOT say "model".)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Even Los Angeles is much better than it used to be. Average visibility in the LA/Orange County area seems much better now than it did in the early 1990s, and my dad has stories of horrendous smog conditions in the 1960s that I have only ever seen when the region is blanketed by smoke from nearby wildfires.
China's Disney... home to Mickey and Minnie Mao.
Right now China holds U.S. instruments in the amount of about $1 trillion. This is about 1/9th of the "public debt", which currently stands at about $9 trillion. But that is a NET number, not gross. Every day some number of bonds are being paid off, and some number of new bonds are being issued. The $9 trillion merely represents the long-term aggregate of the difference between those two numbers.
The total trading volume of U.S. public bonds, all types, is just under $1 trillion PER DAY. In other words the Chinese hold about one day's worth of trading volume. That is still significant, but it's not anywhere near the huge danger that people portray it as.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
what is the 2/3 fantasy?
"I'm going to The People's Juvenile Entertainment Complex And Animated Character Fun Collective!" just doesn't have a ring to it.
v.m
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.
*/
Save the Mouse! 'nuff said ..
Can't be all that bad. If China breaks copyright by stealing military secrets, there would be some cause for concern, but Mickey Mouse is a more positive message for the children, isn't it? So what if Disney Inc doesn't receive ticket sales? Their stock is sure to go up if the population of China maintains a taste for colorful cartoons.
"I don't think it being done under the auspices of the British East India Company means it wasn't done by the British Government,.."
You not thinking it is pretty irrelevent. It wasn't. At the risk of repeating other posts, the British government were nothing to do with it, and scared that they would have to rescue the company with taxpayers dollars if it all went wrong (though only afterwards, because they didn't hear about it before). Look at a wikki if you don't believe me.
Once John Company had taken India, it ruled it for 100 years. The British Government didn't get a look in. Why should they? It was a commercial investment. It was only when they mismanaged the place so badly that the Indians mutinied that the British Government stepped in and took it over.
Seeing what we did with our Indians makes me think that the British Empire was a lot better than we have ever been at running other countries.
Actually, if you believe some of the latest rumors, Disney might even be scoping out land in southwestern Missouri, near Joplin. I just read a big story in the St. Louis, MO morning newspaper about that. There's a fictitious company that's been floating around talks of buying up many acres of land for some type of "amusement park complex with shops and hotels", and the registered addresses on the "branches" of this fake company point to Disney corporate office addresses.
It's just that that's the price he can charge, since there were literally thousands of others I could have gone to.
That would be a neat definition to put in Webster's Dictionary defining 'not slave labour'
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
There are two different pricing models in China, one for the Chinese and one for the "tourist". Even their tourist prices are very low. I had a hard time comprehending this at first. I could not believe I could actually buy a fake Rolex for about $2 USD. I would like to say that yes, this was a fake watch, but it was (and still is) a very good watch. This is not one of those Times Square, cheapo ticking second hand piece of crap. Hell, I would have paid more if it didn't say Rolex on it. Never had a problem with it.
As far as pollution, goes, I have never seen worse. I got into Nanjing and it was raining. The guy who picked me up said it was a nice thing it was raining, so I could see the building, etc. I didn't understand that until the next afternoon, when the poluttion was back and you could only see 1 or 2 blocks.
I will admit that I reacted a bit stingy. I shouldn't have, it was uncalled for.
It's just that I get annoyed by the never-ending display of ignorance about the world outside the US by most Americans that I encounter. It is really weird, of all the Americans I've met they were either some of the sharpest minds I know, or they were as dumb as a sack of wet potatoes. No inbetweens. That's strange, no?
!ERR: Signature not found.
Last time I checked Disney didn't own the entire fucking planet. China is it's own country.. Disney doesn't have a say in what they can and cant do.
Even if China could reform again, and put in place a "better" government, they still couldn't kill the US, and they wouldn't want too.
Suprisingly enough, it's the Canadians who could kill us, but it's economic suicide. (We do more trades with them than Germany and France and possibly most of the other EU nations combined)
Disclaimer: My wife is a purchaser for a fashion conglomerate, and I have somewhat of an interest in the outsourcing of fashion manufacturing.
If you are implying that Chinese textiles are inferior to those of Bangladesh, Cambodia, or Turkey, then you are incorrect. These places that you mention, often along with the Philippines, India, and Vietnam are contracted for lower-end fashion. (Although Turkey does manufacture very high-quality leather goods). Higher-end fashion now mostly manufacturers in China or Hong Kong (for even higher-end fashion). The quality has improved so much that higher-end fashions have no problems moving their base of manufacturing to China. Sure - China still makes crappy $2 socks for Walmart, but it also makes that $800 cocktail gown at BCBG. The move upwards has a lot to do with Vietnam going into WTO and upping its textiles quotas for the U.S.
What you have said about Chinese textiles was true 5-7 years ago. Not anymore. They no longer don't exclusively make cheap stuff.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
I recently returned to the US after visiting several western pacific nations. IP abuse, piracy, entrepeneurship, whatever you want to call it, is endemic. This is not because the people are criminals, it is because they can't afford to pay for the 'real' stuff. When a single 'official' Star Wars movie sells for 2 days income, vs a '12 in 1' rip disk set that has ever SW movie ever released(!) on it for the equivelant of $1, which do you think people will get? There's even a "no stupid plot line" version in that disc set where you don't have to watch the 'wooden romance' between the Princess and the Abomination.
Knock-off goods are available in any market where the annual income is low. You can buy a '12 in 1' movie collection disc of very high quality DVDrips just about anywhere. In Singapore, even though selling them is highly illegal, you just have to know where to look. In Japan, they're in the seedy video stores. In the Philiphines, they are in every video store, or being hawked by street vendors, pushed by bartenders, used car salesman, or displayed in grocery stores. In Hong Kong, they're in the shopping district. In Indonesia, they're everywhere. In Malaysia, they're under the counter or in the ferry terminals. In Australia, even though it has a higher standard of living, you can find them at car-boot sales. I've seen Disney characters on sex toys in the markets of the Philiphines. Disney Hentai/Bukakae for sale in Japan. Princess Fiona blow-up 'dolls' alongside Wookie-wear in Okinawa.
And we're not talking 'sharpie labels' here. Professionally produced, packaged, and sold. The major DVDripping in the Philiphines even warranties their product to play on any DVD player or they will MAIL you a replacement copy.
Global Consumers vs Disney.. Who is the windmill and who is Don Quixote? The windmill will win every time.
Does anyone have map coordinates for the park?
It is the height of arrogance to suggest that the Chinese are incapable of quality.
This is the single biggest fault of the people of the US. They have bought into their own myth of their superiority.
In Capitalist America, Disney owns the State.
In Communist China, the State owns Disney!
Irony can be pretty ironic, yes?
Edith Keeler Must Die
Now, considering China supplies a lot to us and we do a lot in China, I don't think Disney is going to cause such an action, but China still has to be careful about what it's doing if it cares about relations with the US. Disney has other options as well, and although their movies don't show it, they could get pretty creative with ways to punish China. The point is, just because China is a country doesn't mean that Disney has no recourse.
So they copied iPods, movies, music, phone, cars, toys and many others things that we have them manufacture for us.
We are so dumb that we, the United States of America, don't know that if that can manufacture something for us can they not copy this for their own consumption? I am a Chinese-American so I don't speak with an racist mind here. I feel sorry for all of those Chinese people in China that work for barely enough money to get food and they often get beaten and other threats so we can have such nice "toys". But we have sold our soul to get largest profit margins that look impressive on Wall Street but there is a consequence of this. The upper level managers and C-level people get their money but our country and the working people therein are suffering in the dog eat dog (dogs don't naturally eat dogs but none the less we use this silly quote so here it is) economy we are left. We are have become financial insurgents in our own country by destroying our economic base.
The US completely ignored copyright from other countries up into the 60ties.
- history-t9724.html
I agree with that if by "the 60ties", you mean the 1860s.
the United States was a pirate nation that ignored copyrights for its first 100 years.
Source: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000859
In the 1800's, when the americans were a developing nation, they had no qualms in pirating foreign intellectual properties and technologies. People like Charles Dickens (British) etc., complained that this practice was hurting them, but the US did not see it to their benefit to respect foreign claims and piracy thrived. When the U.S. had developed more and there was a local market for their own authors etc., they came up with copyright protection for their own citizens while still not extending the same protection to foreign works. Only, when there was a significant market in Europe etc. for American works, did the U.S. move towards international copyrights. In a nutshell, when they were developing, they ignored copyrights; and when the role was reversed, they sought to protect their works.
Source: http://wccftech.com/forum/america-and-piracy-some
In any case, more and more of the world's economies are moving towards intellectual property, rather than tangible property. That makes comparisons to past history a little difficult. Take a piece of software, for example. Software can involve the involvement of millions of man-hours. It results in no physical product at all. In contrast, historically, the products of labor have been a mixture of intellectual property and physical property. Cars are designed, but they also have to be built. Books lean a little more towards intellectual property, but you still have to physically create them. Contrast that with something like software. Even drugs (while being a physical product) spend much more on development than actual production. As the developed world moves to heavy intellectual property development, countries like China are not only stealing the intellectual property, but doing it at a time when developed countries' economies are built much more heavily on intellectual property and while China maintains large trade surpluses over those same developed countries because they produce physical products (rather than intellectual property).
Also, while intellectual property is a big deal to me (as a software developer, who produces absolutely NOTHING except for intellectual property), I think it's also important to maintain a distinction between what type of intellectual property these countries are stealing. If they steal drug recipes in order to save lives, well, it's stealing, but it's understandable to a certain degree (it's about life or death, like stealing from a pharmacy in order to save someone's life if you really can't afford the price). If they steal a spreadsheet or wordprocessor, it's less understandable and more about economics. If they steal the viagra recipe, video games, or cartoon characters, it's more about greed and shafting the 1st world developers. Why the distinction? Because entertainment is not some essential product that makes a life-or-death difference. In many cases (like entertainment products), there isn't much of a reason they could give that mitigates the stealing itself.
It's called Everland. It's really close to Disney land, but everything it just altered just a tad.
It's a small world ride for example had almost the same music but with a few off notes, and the message was removed.
Also they had the whole electric light parade in it's entirety, I mean actual White Americans that use to work at the real Disney land, doing almost the exact same thing but in Korea. Really freaked me out.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Does anyone know if this is for real? http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0 &msid=118293693465393880700.00000111eccdee7b13e41& z=17&om=1/
I say let them copy us. Copy us all you like. The more they become like us the less we have to fear from each other. Assimilation American Style.
They copy us because we have the best stuff. The best stuff they can come up with on their own is total crap.
Our stuff is better because we are more creative. We are more creative because we are more expressive. We are more expressive because we enjoy freedom. They do not. Ergo their stuff will always suck.
I never really worry about China. Unless they get their act together politically they will never be a serious threat to American hegemony.
So what if they make a few trillion exploiting a billion impoverished souls? It doesn't mean they have any real influence in the modern world. The best they can do is prop up North Korea to distract and annoy us.
Bash us all you will but the world still looks to America for leadership in all the ways that matter. China can only make believe.
He didn't make the trains actually run on time, but he took credit for doing so.
Believe it or not, his beard was not actually too tough for American razors, either.
Arguing the contrary at the time would have led to a beating and a massive dose of castor oil. Some fascist thugs have a sense of humor.
But how can you not know Ikea is from Sweden? They are famous for their Swedish Meatballs! And (at least around here) they have the Swedish flag on everything. Not to mention their stores are this color.
Luckily education here is rapidly going down the drain so it will even out eventually.
!ERR: Signature not found.
Where else can you see Rickey Rouse or Ronald Ruck?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Actually, Cambodia has good work conditions compared to its neighbors. There was a story on "This American Life" a couple years ago which was quite interesting: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1 109
See the part "Act Two. Dreams of Distant Factories."
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
disney is a country too... http://disneycruise.disney.go.com/dcl/en_US/ports/ islandTour?name=CastawayCayIslandTourPage