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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!"
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
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"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Dude... I'm hoping there's some sarcasm there that I missed. You can't be serious. C'mon, you can't even take Iraq!
No, really. Taking on China is out of the question. That would be Dr. Strangelove-grade insanity.
Besides, I'm pretty sure nobody who matters wants confrontation. The Chinese could screw your economy quite thoroughly, yes, but I don't think they'd want to lose their biggest customer---not to mention seeing the 400 billion they hold in US treasury securities become toilet paper. And American corporations (who seem to run your country anyway) would hate to lose dirt-cheap, profit-maximizing Chinese manufacturing.
So I don't see any sort of confrontation any time soon (thankfully). What I see is American and Chinese billionaries getting even richer, while the general standard of living in China raises marginally, and in America goes to the dogs.
But what do I know, really.
Oh, and as for the pollution thing, that's nasty, indeed, shame on the Chinese. But they're not the world's most polluting country---that would be the assholes who emit 24% of the world's greenhouse gases, and yet refuse to sign up to Kyoto.
Erh... Peter Pan is not by Disney. Snow White and the Sleeping Beauty are (afaik) part of Grimm's tales. And I wouldn't be too surprised to find prior art for Winnie, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
" If you're on the side of capitalism, support China"
China isn't really Capitalist in the free market sense of the word. Fascist is probably a more accurate term. China embraced capitalism but only under extensive state control of the Communist Party. When big companies and the state get in bed together this is kind of what Fascism is. The Communist party elite made this leap because it allowed them to get rich, something that was awkward to do under Maoist ideology, OK more like forbidden to do and it would land you in a reeducation camp.
The Communist party elite used their control over the state and its resources to create multi-billion dollar companies over which they and their family members are often given a controlling interest. Of course the U.S., Russia and a host of other countries have seen politicians hand out huge windfalls to the politically well connected so this isn't exactly unique. The naive fail to understand the draw of becoming a politician because the pay is bad and the work sucks. The motivation for many is it allows you to enrich yourself and your friends under the table once you've gained control over the levers of power and all the wealth most governments control.
China is really disturbingly like Nazi German was in the '30's. Americans were rushing to invest in Nazi Germany in the 30's too because its economy was booming at a time the rest of the world was in depression. It was a profitable place to invest. Fascism can be an extremely efficient economic system if you strike the right balance between state control and greed. Too much state control and not enough greed people lose the incentive to make money, and central planning isn't nimble enough to adapt to changing circumstances. Some central planning and state control and the injection of large amounts of state funds at the right places can remove barriers free markets might not and really accelerate growth. A police state is also really good at keeping workers in line.
Fascism became a dirty word thanks to World War II but its been making a stealth come back ever since and there is more than a scent of it in Russia, China, U.S., U.K., Israel and Columbia to name just a few.
@de_machina