China Says 'Mission Accomplished' On Stopping Copyright Infringement

from the wonder-how-that-works dept

Thu, Jul 14th 2011 4:28am — Mike Masnick

With the US putting continued pressure on China about "stopping piracy," the government has been making noises lately about cracking down on infringement. Now, the Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce has declared the crackdown a success:

Marking the end of a nine-month campaign against intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement with cases worth 3.43 billion yuan ($530 million), Vice Minister of Commerce Jiang Zengwei said the situation had taken a turn for the better.

"You could say that there still exists some problems with China's IPR, but I don't endorse the idea that it is extremely serious," Jiang told reporters at a press conference.

Jiang said police had shutdown 12,854 illegal plants making pirated and counterfeit goods and arrested 9,031 suspects since the crackdown began in late October.

Of course, this is unlikely to actually slow down much infringement in the country, nor is it likely to make the US happy. They won't be happy until China is using intellectual property laws as a justification to block American competition... and then, suddenly, the US government won't be happy for a totally different reason -- never taking a break to realize that it was its own fault for pressuring the Chinese government to use these laws for its own purposes, rather than the way that some American companies want them to be used.

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Filed Under: china, copyright

22 Comments

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ASTROBOI, 14 Jul 2011 @ 4:44am

Too bad the USA doesn't do it too.
I've often thought that eventually the media companies would realise that their war was pointless and expensive and that after a particularly visible campaign, would announce "mission accomplished!" and end the nonsense. They could save face and when presented with evidence of continued piracy reply that things would have been SO MUCH WORSE without their efforts that they consider the problem solved. Then they would turn their balony figures around and announce that piracy had decreased much more than it really had. But it looks like China figured this out first.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 4:46am

"...police had shutdown 12,854 illegal plants making pirated and counterfeit goods..."
"and arrested 9,031 suspects"

Uh...they have more Plants than suspects? Weird...
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John Doe, 14 Jul 2011 @ 4:57am

As my pappy always use to say
They won't be happy until China is using intellectual property laws as a justification to block American competition.

Be careful what you wish for because you might get it. Ok, my pappy didn't ever say that, but maybe some will get the reference?
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The eejit (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:04am

Re:
Yaya for criminal organisations. They have this crazy moonfolk hierarchy and everything!
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:04am

1 download != lost sale
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Richard (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:10am

Re:
The numbers are of course invented - as always....

(and not with enough care - by the look of it!)
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Nicedoggy, 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:18am

The funny part of it all?
US says China's Baidu is notorious pirated goods market
ICE didn't seize Baidu.com.

Microsoft is parterning with a known piracy supporter.

Using Baidu MP3 Search.

For all that rhetoric about how IP is important when it comes down to it one thing China have shown the world is that if you have the guns nobody will mess with you, to achieve that you need to ignore all IP and build your market first and have the population number to do it.

ICE will never ever seize any Chinese assets in US soil because the Chinese would seize all American assets in their soil.

But ICE would do it to Spain and Britain because those countries are bitches.
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mike allen (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:30am

Re:
citation needed
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PaulT (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:35am

Re:
Of course, it's worth noting that this was physical counterfeiting, not file sharing.

Most people don't have a problem with this sort of thing being stamped out, and it's far easier to prove actual damages as well as a profit motive for this type of activity. It's a totally different animal to what gets called "piracy" in the usual stories round here.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:36am

Re: Re:
Citation needed? Scroll up.
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abc gum, 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:52am

relevant
China: 1.3 million websites shut in 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14138267
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 6:21am

Re:
Sadly you are right! Are Leaders (Britain) are constantly bending over, lubing up, ready for.....well you know what when it comes America
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Sean T Henry (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 6:50am

Re:
They might be considering warehouses as plants and it is possible that 1 suspect had more than one location.
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Bergman (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 7:11am

Re:
In Communist China, you don't work factory, factory works you!
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freak (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 7:24am

Re:
A 'plant' in this case, is probably a single computer being used to copy CD's/DVD's. In which case, of course some of the suspects have more than 1 computer.
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out_of_the_blue, 14 Jul 2011 @ 7:44am

Don't you /ever/ get tired of being trivially wrong, Mike?
Your blatantly exaggerated title: "China Says 'Mission Accomplished' On Stopping Copyright Infringement" IS NOT SUPPORTED BY ANYTHING in this nuanced statement:
'You could say that there still exists some problems with China's IPR, but I don't endorse the idea that it is extremely serious," Jiang told reporters at a press conference.'

And by the way, neither do YOU, Mike, believe it "extremely serious", as you don't want copyright at all! So you agree with the Commie!
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AJ, 14 Jul 2011 @ 7:55am

Wise man once said...
The rich are rich because they keep doing what made them rich.

Their country got where it is today, in large part, by copying the property of others both intellectual and physical. With this in mind, I'm betting that China has no intention of putting any serious effort at all into "stamping" out piracy. If anything, expect to see a giant boom in "VPN" offerings from China with a major marketing push into countries with draconian IP laws.... They will get rich, while we spend our money beating each other to death with lawsuits and/or make criminals out of common citizens.

For them.. its a win win!
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 8:43am

The title is rather misleading, isn't it? China didn't say "Mission Accomplished" or anything like that, only that they have had success in shutting down a large number of operations.

They aren't suggesting that they are stopping their efforts. It isn't like they are hanging up their jackboots and closing up shop.

The only mission accomplished here is perhaps brainwashing more techdirt readers.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 9:14am

Re:
Pathetic...
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 11:10am

The last sentence is badly written--I understand what you meant to say in it only because I've read your previous posts.
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Ed C., 14 Jul 2011 @ 11:38am

Re: Re:
When there's real money on the table, it's not a question of whether the person would have paid for the content, it's whether the real producer would have made a compelling offer. It's only a real "lost sale" if the producer was making an offer that the person would have taken. And no, someone can't point at $1.99 iTunes downloads and say "there no bargaining with anyone who walks away from that!" It's fairly obvious that someone willing to buy counterfeit DVDs from China isn't going to consider digital copies at all, even for free!
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Gaming desktops, 28 Aug 2011 @ 5:31am

They love to copy
When you actually go to China you will be amazed at how bad it actually is. Pirated movies everywhere, Google clones, Youtube clones, full streaming movies.

Pfff, Pirate Valhalla.
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