US Targeting China In New Anti-Piracy Drive

oxide7 writes "The United States will make China 'a significant focus' of its beefed-up efforts to fight global piracy and counterfeiting of US goods ranging from CDs to manufactured products, a US official said on Wednesday. The International Intellectual Property Alliance, which represents US copyright industry groups, has estimated lost sales in China at more than $3.5 billion in 2009 due to piracy of US music, movies and software."

Comments

Give it a rest

[gizmod]

Ah give it a rest allready. Sheesh, when will the US learn that not everyone dances to their tune.

Re:Give it a rest

[tnok85]

I think most people agree that the US does not produce the best dance music anymore, so I sort of think you're beating a dead horse.

Re:Give it a rest

[johnhp]

The copyright laws in the US aren't "the tune" of the people. They're just another tool for the rich to extract profit from resources. Just like they drill exploratory oil wells in the search for oil, these attempts to enforce copyright in China are an attempt expand an old game to a new area.

The level of copyright enforcement in China is probably directly related to how much the industry is willing to pay the enforcers. Share enough of the profits, and I bet China would be happy to send pirates away to a gulag.

In the long run though, copyright is over. A few major industries will cease to exist in their current form during the next century. All digital content will be considered basically free in a sort of universal public library. What money there is to make will be made by showing movies in theaters, performing live music, and selling physical books to fans of the digital version. I think we'll see a real renaissance once the chains of industry are removed.

China doesn't respect copyright even to the extent of westerners. Unfortunately for the US, that means they could be first to prosper from this revolution. It may be that in 50 years, Chinese villagers will educate themselves with the best books and movies for free, while we in the US are enslaved under the RIAA's latest hellish plot.

Re:Give it a rest

[Anonymous Coward]

the notion of "piracy is OK because it's so common in China that it's not regarded as a crime"

Who said anything about piracy being ok because it's common in China?
Piracy is a crime, assaulting ships and possibly killing their crew is violent and has to be stopped.
In case you were talking about copying information: Nobody is ever harmed by that. The whole concept of being an owner of an infinitely available item is absurd to begin with. Ownership only makes sense for items with finite availability. That's why "piracy" (assuming you were talking about copying information and not about real piracy) is ok. It has nothing to do with China.

That's why the US are hurting their own industry. Well, most of their own industry. There are obviously a few parasitic branches that greatly benefit from the copyright and patent law - at the expense of everyone else.

Re:Give it a rest

[dylan_-]

I think most people agree that the US does not produce the best dance music anymore, so I sort of think you're beating a dead horse.

Beating a dead horse will only give you a crisp beat for about 10 minutes or so; after that it starts to sound a bit "squishy". No wonder you don't produce the best dance music if you can't sort out your percussion.

Re:Give it a rest

[Bert64]

The legitimate producers could afford to price match or even undercut the copied works due to economies of scale...

Faced with 2 identical products for the same price, people will always choose the more reputable source...

But the fact is, dvdorderonline has a highly profitable business, because of the price fixing cartels in the west they are able to take unrealistically high margins on their products while still undercutting the competition and offering a superior product (no drm, no unskippable junk etc)... If faced with stiff competition, their margins would be razor thin like virtually every other line of business.

Re:Give it a rest

[Bert64]

Artists are not expected to work for free, but similarly they shouldn't be allowed to continue being paid for work they've done long ago.
I personally am disgusted to see artists who haven't produced any work in years, still making huge amounts of money...

Put it this way, if i came to your house and did some plumbing work for you, would you give me a one off payment for the work and consider it settled, or would you continue paying me for the plumbing while i sat around taking drugs and rolling around drunk in a huge mansion you were paying for?

Noone deserves to just get an easy ride...

Re:Give it a rest

[delinear]

Regardless of how they spend the money (disgusting as it may be to many people), the real reason indefinite copyright is bad is because, if that artist can get paid forever for one successful piece of work, it takes away any reason they may have to produce further pieces of work in the future. The whole purpose of copyright is meant to be to ensure artists produce work, so if indefinite copyrights let them stop producing work then QED copyright is broken. If governments weren't so busy courting big media you'd hope someone there would be bright enough to see this.

Re:Give it a rest

[Runaway1956]

Actually - I'd be quite happy to see piracy increase by orders of magnitude. I hope it drives a bunch of US companies to bankruptcy.

Let's think a couple minutes. What exactly has fueled all the exporting of American jobs? Corporate greed. Outsourcing? Corporate greed. Copyright? Corporate greed. Corporations export jobs by the thousands, and tens of thousands - but they still want to be paid - for WHAT?

Screw 'em. Let them keep exporting jobs. And, they can export all those executive bonuses along with the jobs. Export all the profits that the shareholders are dreaming of. Export it all. I have absolutely no loyalty to any corporation, as they have no loyalty to American workers.

This has been going on for about 30 years now. I kept expecting things to reach an equilibrium. No equilibrium is visible on any horizon yet.

I'm waiting for the day that only the wealthier 25% of American can afford to buy cheap Chinese junk at Wal-Mart. RIAA and MPAA execs will be among that wealthier 25% - for awhile. Until the American people revolt, and put all those execs in line for firing squads or guillotines.

You seriously expect

[Anonymous Coward]

a US administration helped to power by media/entertainment groups to give a rest protecting their vested interests? Think again.

I have estimated

[Thanshin]

I've estimated the US government owes me 1.63 billion dollars in lost sales.

Because of the existance of the US, I lost the chance of selling my ballpen for exactly 1.63 billion dollars.

Yes, my claim is much closer to reality than theirs and no, I won't explain how exactly I'm entitled to money from sales I didn't do, either.

Would be nice to see

[Sycraft-fu]

This is the kind of piracy that we need to worry about because it isn't just a matter of copyright infringement, it is a matter of fraud. When you make a knockoff copy of something and sell it to someone as legit, you are defrauding them, and you really are causing economic loss to the company who legitimately makes the product. That is a good deal different from simply copying something without permission. It is something worth trying to shut down because it is a real crime with real victims.

I'm all for spending resources on cracking down on crimes where there are victims. I'm not so interested in spending lots of resources on victimless crimes.

Re:Would be nice to see

[thijsh]

Indeed, this are some of the most common levels of infringement consumers deal with:

1. 1) P2P free sharing Infringement, this destroys no value (free evaluation copy) and gives free advertising of the product. When the product is any good the company selling the product should actually benefit from this (or so I've read from numerous studies. for music for example P2P creates net extra value for everyone except the likes of Britney Spears...).
2. 2) For-pay infringement, this can be seen as destroying value (people actually willing to spend money on a product pay it to someone else). Earning money from infringement is a clear violation (as opposed to the grey area of sharing for free = borrowing). Otherwise you would have businesses selling infringed material everywhere which will actually cause great losses for the companies selling the product.
3. 3) For-pay fraudulent infringement, these products destroy value and reputation since the products are often of inferior quality although fairly indistinguishable. This is the type of violation companies should battle with any means they have. This generally never happens in the digital space (with some fake software as the rare exception), but is very common with products like clothing and electronics.

Only level 2 and 3 infringement cause actual damage to companies, but somehow 'copyright infringement' has become synonymous for the level 1 infringement... Which seems to be caused by the large campaigns launched by the MAFIAA and their associates, who exclusively fight against the level 1 infringement. The Pirate Bay provides a service and makes ad-revenue, but does not belong to level 2... but some sites do ask money for downloading the products straight from them and clearly commit a level 2 infringement (which may actually cause damage), but these are never attacked bij the MAFIAA and brought to court. If they claim to defend their financial interest in their products it's raises the question: Why don't they actually fight the infringement that causes the damage to the revenue?

This clearly demonstrates that the MAFIAA was not interested in protecting their existing revenue stream, but are only trying to create an additional (unrelated) stream of litigation-revenue from the consumers who commit level 1 infringement.

Please note that the article is about a new development to combat the extensive level 2 & 3 infringement in China (since the copied media is just sold on the street there it would count as level 2), so it seems the MAFIAA is finally moving along to more legally stable ground (since these violations can't be debated so easily, especially when piled up with the level 3 violations and presented to the Chinese)... I wonder, if we can be bankrupted for infringing some songs, would the Chinese be executed for selling Britney Spears???

Re:Would be nice to see

[Bert64]

Copyright infringement generally doesn't result in inferior copies anymore... That was the old propaganda, that pirate copies were inferior to legitimately purchased copies and this was usually true in the days of analog media... Today, a digital copy could be absolutely identical to the original, or it could actually be superior (eg the DRM or other consumer-hostile features are removed).

Re:Would be nice to see

[thijsh]

The inferior fakes are not copies, but a physical product disguised as the real thing... Have you ever seen a fake Levi's Jeans for example, it almost looks exactly the same but doesn't last as long by a long shot. I've also read reports of fake Cisco hardware that look and function exactly like the real thing... They only found out because people reported who contacted the helpdesk reported a nonexistent serial number... This is exactly the kind of counterfeiting China is well known for, and the resulting products are almost without exception inferior copies.

I do agree though, digital pirated copies are without a doubt a 'value added' product! No DRM, phoning home, added portability and compatibility etc. I've downloaded games I bought because the game crashed on install or required the CD in the drive, or another example: a Blueray movie can't be played with an Xbox360, but a Blueray-rip can (full HD)!

Re:Would be nice to see

[mcgrew]

If they claim to defend their financial interest in their products it's raises the question: Why don't they actually fight the infringement that causes the damage to the revenue? This clearly demonstrates that the MAFIAA was not interested in protecting their existing revenue stream, but are only trying to create an additional (unrelated) stream of litigation-revenue from the consumers who commit level 1 infringement.

A more logical reason is their hidden agenda -- fighting their competetion, indie labels. The RIAA has radio, which never (except low watt college stations) plays indie music, while the indies have P2P. There actually is monetary damage there; if I buy four $5 indie CDs, that's twenty bucks I don't have to buy a Mattellica CD. That's a very good reason for fighting P2P, but they can't very well admit it, can they?

WTF...

[Bert64]

So the chinese have saved themselves $3.5 billion, good for them...
If copyright was enforced then 99% of those chinese people would simply never have had any of this stuff at all. They would be using locally chinese produced media, or freely available media instead. Most of these people simply couldn't afford to pay what US media companies demand.

It does show where the US governments priorities lie tho, they are willing to lean on the chinese over copyrights but couldn't care less about human rights or the environment.

Re:WTF...

[thijsh]

If recent history has shown anything about this subject it's that in most western nations human rights and the environment come second after corporate (copyright) interests. So that confirms your point, the political priorities lie exactly where the money is, and there is no money in human rights or the environment (except when you sell these things out).

Gee, someone else who doesn't understand debt

[Sycraft-fu]

National debt is not like loan sharking. You do not loan money for whatever terms you like and then call it due at a convenient time. More properly, it is investing in a nation.

So, in the case of the US you can buy treasury securities of various kinds. They vary from T-bills as short as four weeks to T-Bonds as long as 30 years. In the case of a short bill, it is sold at a discount and then pays face value. So If you bought a $1000 1 year T-bill with a 5% yearly interest, you would pay $950 for that note. At the end of 1 year, the government would pay you the face value of $1000. In the case of longer bonds, the government pays you a fixed percentage of interest every 6 months and then the principal when it matures.

Now there are important things to note about this:

1) There is no mechanism for cashing in early. you can't come to the government and demand your money now. It pays at a set time. The only way to get money early is to sell the security to someone else. This is done frequently, they are traded on the open market like other things. However, you cannot get your full value for such a thing. If you try to tell me a $1000 t-bill, I'm not paying you $1000. I might pay you more than you paid if it is close o maturity, but you are going to take a loss over the value of the note.

2) The securities pay in US dollars. That means that you get paid the stated amount in current US dollars when it matures, not your currency. So if something happens to severely devalue US currency, you get less. The government says it'll pay you X many US dollars. It does not promise they are worth a given amount.

3) These are nothing more than IOUs from the government. In fact you don't even get physical notes anymore, it is all just entries in the US treasury. So while it would have a severe impact on their credit, the US government can simply default, meaning refuse to pay on their securities. There is nothing anyone can do about there, no court they can be taken to to order payment.

4) As I noted, the securities are an INVESTMENT. China has invested in them for many reasons, stability, to help back their currency, etc. To get rid of that investment could have some rather negative consequences.

So please, do yourself a favour and learn a bit more on debt and lending in general, but in particular how it works on a national level. It is not at all a loan shark kinds of arrangement. Acting as though it is is rather silly.