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China Faces Piracy Suit Over Censorship Software
angry tapir writes "Web software filtering vendor CyberSitter has filed a $2.2B lawsuit against the Chinese government, two Chinese software makers, and seven major computer manufacturers for their distribution of Green Dam Youth Escort, a controversial Web filtering package the Chinese government had mandated to be installed on computers sold there. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that Green Dam copied code from CyberSitter."
1. Get the government to require your product be shipped with all computers, and used by all households with children.
2. Make your product by stealing code to save on development costs.
3. Bill the computer makers for license rights to the program you stole and the government requires, they can't turn you down or they're out of the PC business.
4. PROFIT!!!
Exactly. The makers of this software aren't hoping for a settlement. They just want to make the rights infringement public, and lawsuits attract publicity.
Everyone knows that Chinese "programmers" cheerfully copy whatever they get their hands on. This lawsuit is the legal equivalent of a press release.
Business in North America has realized that they can no longer compete with the developing world in resources, manufacturing or services, and the only way they can make money is by selling access to the intellectual and cultural property they have acquired rights to. So the movies, music, code, patents and any idea that business can get their hands on is something to be exploited for money. This is the reason for the ACTA negotiations: To create a world where such "intellectual property" created in North America can be peddled to the developing world to get the money back that we have been sending them for their cheap goods and cheap services.
The problem is that average people in both the developing world and the developed world simply don't believe that draconian rules about so-called "intellectual property" are justified. Why do "artists" get to perform once and get paid over and over when regular people need to go to work every day to make a living? Is it not absurd to fine some 14-year old hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few songs on Kazaa? Why is it OK that copyright duration keeps getting extended over and over just so W*lt D*sney can keep making money recycling the same old tired stuff? It also seems that young people see no problem with sharing music with their friends, or making mix CDs or other reasonable use of music, since that music is broadcast free over the radio anyway. This is not to advocate piracy or law-breaking, but if people think that laws are too restrictive and unjust on what people can do with their copies of software, music and video and what they can do with new ideas they hear about then they will ignore those laws and do what's best for themselves.
I understand the reason for this lawsuit and I wish the plaintiff well, but I suspect that in the long run there will be much more of this "intellectual property theft" and people will eventually realize that most people don't agree that it is a terrible crime to steal ideas or music or videos that can be easily shared or freely copied. Eventually the laws that try to enforce huge penalties for such "theft" will make about as much sense to the public as the old "Red Flag" laws that tried to nobble the automobile in a desperate attempt to protect the vested horse, stagecoach and railroad industries.
the USA has a lot of debt in the hands of China. The only way to get out from under that debt in the USA is to figure out what they can sell to the Chinese to bring back all the $$$ that USA has paid for goods and services. I don't see how "intellectual property" can be the product that the Chinese want to pay for as it's easy to copy and share and historically that's what citizens and business are used to doing, both in the USA and in China.
There ain't no easy answers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
(Yeah, I know it's only Wikipedia but I am AC after all)
Exactly. The makers of this software aren't hoping for a settlement. They just want to make the rights infringement public, and lawsuits attract publicity.
On top of making a publicity, it's actually a profitable move. It's so obvious(at least to civilians Chinese like me) the China Government is intending to create another listed company by giving monoplization power to a private company created Green Dam. Law suits like that, international or local, would greatly affect the risk profile and directly affect the estimation of stock value. For mutual benefit, that listed company would pay for the royality eventually. CyberSitter could cheerfully accept compensation as a settlement in the future.
Everyone knows that Chinese "programmers" cheerfully copy whatever they get their hands on. This lawsuit is the legal equivalent of a press release.
To tell you the true, in the case of Green Dam, these programmers are not copying codes, they copied the binary directly, and they don't even bother to change the company name in the executables. XD
:)
But you're right in the sentance "Chinese porgrammers cheerfully whatever they get their hands on". In fact, they're the huge supporter of opensource programming. (I'm recruiting opensource programmers there and I've never found short of them.