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Google Launches Free, Legal Music Downloads in China
Wired is reporting that Google has a launched a new music download service in China to better compete with the leading search company there, Baidu.com. Offering some 350,000 songs, a number set to rise to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.1 million in the coming months, the library includes both Chinese and foreign artists signed by Sony Music, EMI, and Universal Music. Proponents of the new service are also hoping it will combat illegal music downloads simply by offering higher quality songs for download. There are no immediate plans to expand this service beyond China.
Yes, thank you. This is exactly the problem with free-trade, it seems to be designed entirely to sap the wealth out of richer countries and give them to poorer countries. Free-trade in principal would be a great idea, except for the fact that it seems the US (and a very few other western nations) are the only countries that actually practice the 'free' part of free-trade.
Oh yeah, sure export your foreign vehicles, do you mind if we send some to you Japan? Oh what's that, you put giant tariffs and unit limits on your American imports? That's ok, we won't do anything to combat it, nor put tariffs in place ourselves, cause we play nice.
Another great example was an article from the Economist a few years back. Basically it was an American bike company saying they were going out of business because Chinese bikes could be sold for less. They explained that although they had harder workers per hour, greater output, and greater efficiency, the (justified) environmental laws put into place in the US to prevent pollution added enough of a burden to the bike manufacture that bikes made in China which had no environmental oversight could be produced and shipped cheaper than the native bike. They also showed that if China had proper anti-pollution in place, the bike could be produced for CHEAPER in America than in China.
But I guess we're the only ones that play by the rules.