US, China Working On Intellectual Property Rights 90
itwbennett writes "US Attorney General Eric Holder is visiting Beijing this week to discuss how China and the US can better coordinate efforts to stop intellectual property rights violations. 'One of the things that has happened in recent years is that counterfeiting has become a globalized industry,' said Christian Murck, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. To effectively shut down these operations, cross-country efforts at strengthening global enforcement like Holder's visit to China are crucial, he added. Coinciding with Holder's visit, China announced it will launch a new national campaign to crack down on intellectual property rights violations. The campaign will take aim at the production and distribution of pirated goods such as DVDs and software products. Violations relating to registered trademarks and patents will also be targeted. The campaign will last for half a year. The commercial value of pirated software in China, at $7.5 billion, is second only to that in the US, where it is $8.3 billion, according to the Business Software Alliance and IDC."
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Sorry was my first...
Anyhow, as commentary, I doubt this will go much of anywhere... much like you can find pirated DVDs sold by crackheads in the NYC subway... trying to dissuade or even outright prevent IP theft, etc. from occurring in a place like China is absurd.
As I've found out in government, rules, laws and otherwise are there to make certain people feel better but rarely do they help or actually enforced universally and without bias. Sorry... just feeling a little malaise at this point.
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Here's a way to make sure it gets enforced:
Any attempt to sell counterfeit goods in another country, shuts down trade with the offending country and gives the copyright owning country the right to sink that country's trade vessels.
Bet that would step up enforcement in a hurry.
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So by logic then, I think the release of the new Battleship film should lend itself to an interesting scenario....
Chinese (but Nigerian 409 flagged) cargo vessel carrying pirated copies of the Battleship movie, filmed in VHS-C and upscaled on an iMac knockoff with a pirated copy of iMovie in the nearest combination opium-den multiplex, gets sunk by a U.S. Cruiser outside of the Port of Los Angeles... damn, you sunk my Battleships?!
Just sayin'
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So, if someone in the USA makes counterfeit jeans for example (or software, or etc.) and sells it to someone in Iran, the country of Iran can sink our trade vessels? OH you meant only the USA can do those things...I see.
Not even humorous, just blind, narcissistic flag waving.
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Actually, no, I'm perfectly fine with Iran sinking our trade vessels in their waters if they're carrying counterfeit goods.
Thus putting back to work the 23% of Americans currently unemployed, all in searching cargo containers for counterfeit goods before they leave the country.
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Eh. I disagree.
If China chose to crackdown on illegal DVD sellers, they could do it just as effectively as the US did it (DMCA makes it illegal), but with the additional punishment of serving hard time in the Chinese version of the Gulag.
China simply doesn't want to. They are like the US in the 1800s, with very little protection for foreign authors.
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Prepare for a lawsuit by Anonymous Coward for violating his IP for first posts.
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And by Tim Berners-Lee and George Lucas for his username...
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WTF!? First post getting modded up? The world is coming to its end ...
one sided? (Score:3, Insightful)
Coincidental timing after China's latest strangling of rare earths, yes?
Re:one sided? (Score:5, Insightful)
Coincidental timing after China's latest strangling of rare earths, yes?
It just means that China is now doing significant in-country R&D and authorship that they have a vested interest in protecting.
Pre-1900, the US was the same way. We couldn't give two shits about the European IP we were constantly ripping, and it pissed off plenty of European countries. Once we really started developing stuff in-country, our IP laws suddenly grew teeth.
History repeating itself itself.
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Vested interest if it's THEIR invention.
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Indeed, I rather think China will play favorites and let its own rip others off, but not extend the same invitation.
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Hello schoolyard. How come we humans have managed to do so much, yet have economic and political behaviors that, at best, seems to be maybe one step away form a hill of moneys?
Re:one sided? (Score:5, Insightful)
Coincidental timing after China's latest strangling of rare earths, yes?
It just means that China is now doing significant in-country R&D and authorship that they have a vested interest in protecting.
Pre-1900, the US was the same way. We couldn't give two shits about the European IP we were constantly ripping, and it pissed off plenty of European countries. Once we really started developing stuff in-country, our IP laws suddenly grew teeth.
History repeating itself itself.
The history is accurate, but not quite a reflection of current events IMO (although it may someday get there).
The counterfeiting is happening in China. If they were interested in stopping it, then they would do so. It's not like the counterfeiters are exactly hiding their production factories. This is China, knowing that the American politicians will never get tough on China, seeing as how they're financing most of our out-of-control national debt.
It's why nothing has come of thirty years of "Middle East Peace Talks". All the talking in the world won't do you any good if both parties at the table aren't really sincere.
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It's why nothing has come of thirty years of "Middle East Peace Talks". All the talking in the world won't do you any good if both parties at the table aren't really sincere.
And both parties at the table must have the authority to make their side lay down the arms and support in the population to make such an agreement on their behalf. Sincerity is just one of the problems...
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OK, i'm on the ground here in PRC and the situation is a thousand times more complex than what you are thinking about. Your thoughts are, of course, conditioned by your environment and culture/ background. Try this on for size: where do D&G make there stuff? In China. Where? In Chinese factories that work insane hours every day producing goods by highly overworked, hungry, poor workers who drone away to get a paycheck. Ok, where do they produce the "pirates?" Oh damn it! the same factory, the same worke
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Oddly enough, I think your post supports my thinking. China (we know we're talking about the PRC, ok?) simply doesn't view the counterfeiting as a significant problem to be dealt with. They likely blame the US for "demanding low prices", and so feel perfectly justified in manufacturing their own line of products with licensed designs to boost profits.
My assertion: China isn't really interested in stopping the counterfeiting - therefore, it will continue. Do you disagree?
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Very much in agreement. It is just a matter of how the word"pirate" and the idea of "piracy" has a particular negative connotation in the west while here it is not negative it is good business. Westerners only see "you are stealing from us" while Chinese see "you want the prices that our practices allow"> I see a larger picture where the consumerist culture is using these terms to keep people blinded to the reality of their chains.
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CCP, CCP, CCCP (Score:2)
To this day, they are ruled by the authoritative CCP regime. [But] the people have more freedoms than they did 20 years ago
So I take it that China under the CCP is better than CCCP [wikipedia.org] that tried communism first. But is it better than the CCP that runs Eve Online?
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So, replacing one set of oligarchs with another is repairing now?
Re:one sided? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You forgot to add that China is a nuclear state as well, and controls the majority of rare metals required for new technologies, and has decided to not export them.
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Coincidental timing after China's latest strangling of rare earths, yes?
It just means that China is now doing significant in-country R&D and authorship that they have a vested interest in protecting.
Not yet. Or not yet enough to balance out what they plan to steal. No, in this case it just means that China knows they can continue to pretend to have some interest in protecting the IP of other nations while they maintain a massive, government funded practice in nearly every industry of blatantly stealing any IP they want. Making IP agreements is a great idea if you simply ignore them while your counterpart obeys each agreement and refuses to do anything about the fact that you don't.
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I think it's a rather apt demonstration of just how imaginary imaginary property really is.
You stop exporting IP, people just pirate it. You stop exporting rare earths...people suffer.
Unfortunately, China has the real stuff, and they know it.
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Depends on the statistic actually...
The BSA REALLY sucks ass at the lost revenue/lost jobs/lost economy/etc, because they assume that all pirated software is a lost sale at a 1:1 ratio, which is complete unwarranted bullshit.
On the other hand, they don't seem to suck at coming up with a retail value of pirated software currently in use in the wild. In those numbers...they tend to be rater accurate.
Commercial value != lost sales...but it would appear this time around they're only looking at commercial value
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Even worse... I recall hearing (from here..?) that any machine not running legit windows (say, running linux) is assumed to be running cracked windows. Pretty bent way of doing things.
I might be mistaken, I thought that was the BSA though.
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Exactly what I was thinking.
Pirating stops when the US agrees to let China steal reproduce and sell any/all IP at will. Then the US government can concentrate on rooting out US music downloaders.
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"Then the US government can concentrate on rooting out US music downloaders."
I think they should do just that. Maybe they should also get the army involved! These pirates that are 'stealing' profit that artists/businesses could potentially have had must be stopped at all cost!
Business Software Alliance (Score:4, Funny)
Now these numbers are certainly reliable; they come from the BS Alliance!
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Bull Shit Alliance?
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Pretty much, yep. [cnet.com]
Priorities. (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed discussing how to coordinate efforts to stop human rights violations.
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As opposed discussing how to coordinate efforts to stop human rights violations.
Where's the money in that?
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You seem to be under the impression that China cares.
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As opposed discussing how to coordinate efforts to stop human rights violations.
Hey, the Intellectual Property rights holders are human, aren't they? Sounds like a human rights issue to me!
The genius of AND (Score:2)
I wasn't aware that the US had a binary choice, in which it could either:
Remember last November [bbc.co.uk], and the discussions in May [reuters.com]?
What the heck happened to the comment system? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:What the heck happened to the comment system? (Score:4, Informative)
I disabled "dynamic discussions" in my prefs, and the problem went away.
That might be coincidence though. Just as an experiment, try going into your prefs and just saving what's already there. What's a "dynamic discussion" anyway?
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Of course if he can read your answer his problem is already solved ...
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Looks like a 'trick" to move people off the old function-over-form system to the new javascripted form-over-function system.
They probably reset the defaults and figured some number of people would just live with it.
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Those kinds of tricks are fine for Google, where there's a ton of folks who don't care or won't notice (gmail UI changes and the left panel on the search results in particular), but I think it's kind of funny that they're trying it here, in a place that's known for users with strong DIY tendancies, grumpy users, and useless frippery-type changes.
It took me about a minute to get it back the way it should be, but I really wish they'd announce the changes and let us decide to check it out.
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The same thing happened to me. I had to spend 5 minutes looking for the relevant option in preferences. SOmething went awry server-side I guess. I know I didn't change it.
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Same here. I disabled the "dynamic" stuff and set the view to "classic" shortly after it was introduced, and today suddenly I have it in my screen.
Looks like a bug.
China (Score:2)
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You are correct. They are. And you know what? I don't feel the least bit of sympathy for us. We're swallowing it hook line and sinker. In the end, you get what you deserve, and if we're the kind of colossal idiots we appear to be, we *will* get what we deserve. In fact, we've already started to reap the rewards.
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...
...
China has long viewed American pre-eminence in the region as a historical accident and an aberration. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) feels enormously uncomfortable existing in a regional order that is based not just on open trade, freedom of the seas and rule-of-law, but also on a democratic community backed by American naval power and military alliances. Look through Chinese strategic documents over the past decade and around four-fifths are about how best to bind, dilute, circumvent or supersede American power and influence.
Rudd is correct to suggest that China has become a "major stakeholder" in the regional and global system. But the broad-brush approach by America and its partners in Asia has been to encourage China to be a "responsible stakeholder" as it rises – one that will increasingly uphold and strengthen the existing order rather than seek to challenge or subvert it. But the latter is precisely what Beijing is looking to do, even as it has been a significant beneficiary of the current system.
Washington erroneously assumes it can shape Chinese goals and purposes. While encouraging China to be a responsible stakeholder is seen as an end-game in the US, internal debates within China reveal that Beijing sees behaving as a responsible stakeholder as a way to bide its time while it builds what it terms Chinese "comprehensive national power."
The responsible stakeholder approach is designed to entrench China as a status quo power because it has been allowed to benefit from the current system. For example, China benefits enormously from the US naval role in the South China Sea, which helps trade and commerce to thrive by protecting trade routes. Yet while the US devotes ships, troops and money to these efforts, China benefits as a security free-loader in the region instead of a trusted contributor.
China has not become an entrenched stakeholder within the US-led region. Indeed, its disruptive claims to over four-fifths of the South China Sea have only intensified, rather than faded, as it continues to rise within the existing order. This approach assumes there is no alternative for emerging states but to compete within the existing open and liberal order.
The responsible stakeholder framework does not account for the fact that rising participants – especially genuinely powerful ones – can seek to gradually dismantle and redesign the current order from within. Subversion and "winning without fighting," rather than confrontation and contest, is the prudent Chinese strategy for undermining both the US and the strength of Washington’s security alliances and partnerships in Asia-Pacific.
The responsible stakeholder framework also assumes that Chinese interests and ambitions are elastic and can be molded according to the circumstances of China's rise. This argument ignores compelling historical and contemporary evidence that China is predisposed to seek leadership of Asia and to recast the regional order according to its preferences. After all, regaining its paramount place in the region is inextricable from reversing what Chinese history books describe as 150 years of humiliation at the hands of western and Japanese powers.
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/China-power-economic-west-foreign-relations-policy-pd20100506-579DV?opendocument&src=rss [businessspectator.com.au]
Unfortunately there's many simila
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Sure fire idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Just replace the FBI warning at the beginning with the message, "this movie brought to you by the Dalai Lama".
Then sit back and watch the Chinese government crack down on pirated DVDs with a vengeance...
Re:Sure fire idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Epic #backfire.
Yes, they'll crack down on the pirated DVDs, but they'll also crack down on the non-pirated DVDs, and you'll have to eat a billion pressings...
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Nah, the number of non-pirated DVDs sold in China is so low it won't be a problem.
That's rich! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe for a second any agreement China comes to agree upon would be honored. They haven't respected the intellectual property of ANY foreign country for decades, and I don't think a stern talking-to from the 'richest' and 'most powerful' country in the world is going to help.
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Most of the people in the 'richest' and 'most powerful' country in the world don't seem to respect intellectual property either.
I can understand Trademark protections - and the Chinese government actually does respect those for the most part. However, with the majority of patents being ridiculously broad 'land grabs' and copyright growing from reasonable (ie. respectable) term lengths to effectively indefinite, I see no reason to lump all three of these things together and pretend they are problems of equal
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Hooray!!! (Score:2)
Another chance for China to tell us "FU" (by telling us that they're going to do something about this and not) and another chance for us to bend over and take it!
On the other hand, seeing how draconian stuff is getting with ACTA, maybe that's a good thing.
The Quiet Invasion (Score:2)
Beijing has been ass-deep in American IP lawyers for years.
Corporations - 2 : Human Beings - 0 (Score:4, Insightful)
At last, the USA and China can agree on something. (Score:2)
All citizens are criminals until proven wealthy.
allow me to set myself up for disappointment (Score:2)
Is the BSA figures with this BS? (Score:2)