China Says 'Mission Accomplished' On Stopping Copyright Infringement

from the wonder-how-that-works dept

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


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  1. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    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...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    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?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    The eejit (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:04am

    Re:

    Yaya for criminal organisations. They have this crazy moonfolk hierarchy and everything!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:04am

    1 download != lost sale

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    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!)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    mike allen (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:30am

    Re:

    citation needed

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 5:36am

    Re: Re:

    Citation needed? Scroll up.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    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

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    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

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. icon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. icon
    Bergman (profile), 14 Jul 2011 @ 7:11am

    Re:

    In Communist China, you don't work factory, factory works you!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. icon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  16. identicon
    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!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  17. identicon
    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!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  18. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  19. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Jul 2011 @ 9:14am

    Re:

    Pathetic...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  20. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  21. identicon
    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!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  22. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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