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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!"
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
We do all of the research and development, and they sell it at cost with no reimbursement, thus destroying our system of innovation,
Don't worry, the US did exactly the same thing in its infancy, ignoring European patents & copyrights at the govt level.
As soon as it became in the elite's interests to protect patents, copyright, etc, they were protected - the protections have become stronger & stronger over the years.
The same thing will happen in China. Get over it.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Err I think you means Today, Disney. Today, GM. Today, Microsoft. Today, IBM. Today, Medical Drugs. Today, everything but the kitchen sink. Tomorrow, the kitchen sink...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
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
Copyright AND trademark.
I'm all for weaker copyright laws (though not to the extent of some people here), but this is WAY too far IMO.
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.
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)
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.
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?
They've never been our friends
Who the hell is?
China hasn't been socialist since their 1978 reforms. Disney hasn't been capitalist (in the sense of participating in a free market economy) since they bought the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998, and probably weren't before then.
If you're on the side of capitalism, support China. If you agree with Disney's destruction of the public domain, support them.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
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!
Oh no, we mustn't get over it. Sackcloth and ashes everyone!
It's very important that we complain and moan about China, because we need someone to blame for the coming fall in living standards in the US. We also need to be painfully aware and forever complaining about other people's social problems so that we can be in continual denial about the ones that exist at our own doorstep.
It's in our local elitist's interests that we are unaware of the problems that they cause.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
And if you think both are wrong and that the world is not made up of binary issues, support neither.
I find it ironic that copyright law was getting so much attention recently because of the AACS key being posted everywhere, and now we see this. While I am against the current length of copyright, this sort of blatant infringement (especially of newer characters such as Shrek) is outrageous. It has been known and understood for years that China doesn't care about IP laws, whether it is patents or copyrights. Many cars and trucks sold in China (by Chinese companies) are copies of Hyundai, Toyota, or GM designs. When I say copies, I don't just mean visually; many times the parts for the Chinese model of a vehicle can be interchanged with those for the original design. It's disgusting how much the WTO has allowed China to get away with. If this story ever makes it to the mainstream press in the United States, I suspect it might actually cause a significant outcry by the public.
At some point, the people of this country will begin to recognize the true costs of doing business with China.
Or you actually meant that we are quite "sane" and it is only the Chinese who __think__ we are crazy... It seems you underestimate them too much. We are on the piedestal in front of the whole world, everyone can see exactly how crazy or not crazy we are.
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/
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
Are you saying that because Europe wasn't able to prevent the US from infringing, therefore America shouldn't try to prevent China from doing the same?
Replace "Shouldn't" with "can't". What incentive do the Chinese have of revising their law to suit mega corps like Disney or GM? You cannot force it by arms because the conflict would annihilate civilization as we know it. You cannot do ti economically because the US has willingly entangled their economy deeply with china's. Your left with make a lot of noise and pretending your doing something.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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.
It's called reverse engineering. Think of Samba or bnet ....
Put identity in the browser.
The US completely ignored copyright from other countries
up into the 60ties.
Post war japanese companies copied like mad, you could
cross use spares.
Disney themselves stole most of their stuff from other countries
fairytails.
Sometimes, you have to take a side. Backing up one side or another on this issue doesn't make you back them up on all issues: supporting Disney's IP doesn't mean you like their labor practices, or, supporting cultural appropriation and re-use on China's behalf doesn't mean you like their foreign policy.
But there is a substantive issue here, and it makes no sense to try to squirm out of it.
My view? The first world has mass-exported so much cultural material - Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, The USS Enterprise, Darth Vader, Batman - characters that have become embedded in our subconscious and become part of the fabric of mass culture itself - that I think it is only natural that it will break the boundaries of intellectual property, particularly in the peripheries outside the first world, where representations and images flow with a different logic entirely. What is really sad, actually, is that in Latin America, you see craftspeople making (illegal) ceramic and knitted versions of branded merchandise. The sad this isn't that - the sad thing is that, because they don't feel intimidated by IP law, that they are really being more creative/productive and original than people who merely consume "officially licensed" merchandise.
The copyright for KJV was held in 1700s and its still in copyright? Jesus christ(tm?) on a pogostick. How long does copyright last in England?
> It has been known and understood for years that China doesn't care about IP laws Of cause they do not care about your laws. They are a country for gods sake. They can come up with their own laws. The only concern here are international treaties. While I agree that all countries should adhere to these treaties, I would like to point out that china breaks other international treaties that are far more important. (Various human rights issues for example). But at least China does not claim to be the best country of the world that all others should follow. As far as international treaties go I am by for more concerned with the long tradition of the US ignoring international treaties or not signing them to begin with. Copyright and patents are currently good for the US economy, so the US decides to adhere to these specific treaties and making a big fuss about others not doing so. But I doubt that this will last once the RAGAE-states start surpassing the US with patents. The US never cared about any treaty that it does not immediately benefit from. That's the way it goes if you are the bully and there are no teachers around.
right... I think you missed the point that we have a hundred + billion dollar trade deficit with china, ie they are in a position to screw us much more than the other way around. When government "borrows" money that capital does not just magically appear, we borrow from china and others, I don't think china would be very interested in financing our little blockade of their exports, they could easily send the US economy into a serious tail spin as they own more and more of the US every day.
You may not understand how world works in reality.
Laws and trade agreements are a result of geopolitical, economical and military power over other nations. China doesn't fear retaliation from US or other countries, so they pretty much do as they please.
Good for them. Not so good for us.
(Of course, I may not have gotten your joke, if it was one.)
Actually, it's exactly what Disney is built on. Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio, Snow White, and oh so many more, are characters not invented by The Disney Company, but appropriated from either folk tales or popular stories fallen out of copyright -- and then slapped with an ever expanding copyright thanks to Disney's lobbying efforts. So while the original Pinocchio: Tale of a Puppet is long out of copyright (and also was at the time Disney appropriated it), The Disney Company's Pinocchio character is still copyrighted in America (I don't know how long time Chinese copyright law extends over). But the fact is that Disney's character is just as much part of popular culture as Carlo Collodi's original story was at the time Disney took it.
So why is it treated totally different by law? Copyright law is totally unjust and unfair in a historical perspective, now made to protect certain companies from what they originally profited from. But that's in America. Other countries don't necessarily have copyright protection for as long time.
You might wanna provide any kind of reference so people can see what you're talking about.
Forgive the blunt nature of my statement, but you seem to lack a basic understanding of just when copyright is appropriate. This isn't a free use issue, like the battles over media here in the States. This is a clear and total violation of intellectual property - even on a corporate scale. What's more, it's government sponsored.
This isn't about whether the Disney execs can afford another yacht, this is about the basic validity of IP law and what it's designed to protect.
Zippo currently estimates its sales are artificially lowered by 25% a year (likely a high estimate, but probably not too high) because of people purchasing Chinese-made copies. Zippo is a company in one town with one factory, and they recently had to lay off workers. Does your opinion change because of that?
Would your opinion change if you learned that my father risks losing a significant amount of money - one that may never be known - should someone steal the work of the inventor he's backing? Would it change if you knew we're an average middle class family with enough, but not a lot?
It shouldn't.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
It's really a mixture of points. The idea is that Disney uses a lot of stuff from the public domain, but Disney is also directly responsible for the effectively infinite copyright length which prevents anything copyrighted from ever entering the public domain again.
It's wrong for china to steal stuff like Shrek or whatever else they've developed in recent years. I'd say it's morally just fine for them to steal old stuff like Mickey Mouse which by all rights should have been in the public domain decades ago.
Cow Cube
China has the US by the short hairs, but they can't pull very hard....yet. Until the value of the US market is below a critical percentage of China's overall exports, they will wait. After that point, it will be a good idea to start learning to speak Chinese.
China is to nations what Microsoft is to corporations, except far worse since they don't have to worry about legal issues beyond giving them lip service. They also have nukes and lots of tanks.
The saddest fact is that we can only blame ourselves. Congress continues to float bonds to finance our addiction to deficit spending. China buys them up secure in the knowledge that there is no political will in the US to actually balance a budget. Not only do we get completely outclassed in trade, they also are our banker-to whom we owe big time.
The upshot is we buy things we can't afford from China, paid for with money we borrowed from China.
How do you greet an overlord in Chinese?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
All true, but at the moment it's more "Mutual Assured Destruction" than a smart bomb -- eg, it would take China more than a year to offload all its dollar based assets, but the dollar would tank the moment they started to do so -- crushing the value of their assets and collapsing their economy by an equal amount.
What should worry us greatly are the signs that China is starting to diversify out of dollars.
This story recalled for me William Gibson's description (in a Wired article a few years ago) of Indonesia (I think it was) as "Disneyland with the Death Penalty". To which this story brings new meaning. China is Microsoft with Tanks.... -- nice slogan.
"How do you greet an overlord in Chinese" you ask? "Welcome to Wal Mart!"
When you owe the bank a hundred million, the bank should be worried.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Considering much of our food and oil is imported, I'd say fucking with the full faith and credit of the United States government is a bad, bad idea.
So they are a bit like the US, then?
While I certainly dislike the (genuinely) Fascist tendencies of that particular "Communist" country, there is quite a lot of hypocrisy in the US about China's behaviour. It seems to me that whenever another country starts to be genuinely strong, the Americans have this need to start painting it as some kind of cancerous growth, while they have been, especially during this millennium, very enamored of the idea of an empire of their own.
The Chinese are under no obligation to be Americans' pawns, just as much as you wouldn't agree to the Americans being pawns to the French through the UN, or somesuch yankee horror scenario. The USA is all about looking for one's own benefit, both on an individual and national level, so you shouldn't complain when someone else does the same.
The fact that you're about to get financially pwned by the Chinese is your own fault -- the Chinese lend you if you're willing to burn through money like there's no tomorrow, and you'd better just deal with the consequences. I am awaiting with eagerness to see whether an arrogant China is better than an arrogant America... it's noteworthy that China has never been particularly imperialistic outside its own borders. World-domination is not neccessarily their goal, as long as they are secure and strong within them. Whatever they do inside in their gulags might be the downside, but change regarding that will have to come from among their own people anyway. You just can't bomb westernization into the hearts of 1.3 billion people.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
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.