China Agrees With WTO on Piracy Fight
Despite being America's number one trade partner, China is now facing action from the U.S. and the World Trade Organization (WTO) over piracy.
The WTO has faulted China on its inability to protect the intellectual property rights on a wide range of goods, from music to movies and beyond. "Today, a WTO panel found that a number of deficiencies in China's IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) regime are incompatible with its WTO obligations," said acting U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier. "We will engage vigorously with China on appropriate corrective actions to ensure that U.S. rights holders obtain the benefits of this decision."
According to Reuters, the U.S. government started the dispute against China in 2007, due to the increasingly large amount of pirated media originating from the country's black market. The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), which represents a number of U.S. music, movie, book and software industry groups, says China costs those industries over $3.7 billion in lost sales annually.
The ruling effectively keeps China and any other nation from doing a bare minimum to protect intellectual property. These nations must now get WTO-acceptable results when fighting piracy. According to Reuters, "The United States persuaded the dispute settlement panel that China violated WTO rules by barring copyright protection for movies, music and books that have not been approved by state censors for legitimate sale."
In short, most of the media being pirated in China is media that is not approved by the state. If a Chinese citizen wants to see the latest Indiana Jones film, but the government won't allow it in the country, he or she will find other ways of obtaining the film. "China restricts access to many legitimate titles, but that doesn't stop the pirated distribution of virtually all U.S. films in China," Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement.
Only time will tell if China will actually follow through and crack down on pirated media. But the WTO is probably one of the last governing bodies one would try and cross.
UPDATE: Following the WTO ruling, China has agreed to cooperate with the organization as well as the United States.
"As we strengthen our work on domestic intellectual property rights, we will continue to promote international exchanges and cooperation, in order to encourage the healthy development of trade relations," said Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Yao Jian.
Read the Reuters update here.
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So China must protect the rights of works that’s not allowed to be marketed in China? Where did they get that $3.7 billion figure if they can’t sell it legally in China? This is akin to giving Al Qaeda tax exemption status but continuing to outlawing it in the US.
"As we strengthen our work on domestic intellectual property rights, we will continue to promote international exchanges and cooperation, in order to encourage the healthy development of trade relations," said Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Yao Jian.
I'll take that with a grain of salt.
"says China costs those industries over $3.7 billion in lost sales annually."
How do they know that? If no one were using pirated copies, then a lot of chineese probably wouldn't whtch those movies or listen to that music. Just because I got an MP3 for free somewhere, it doesn't mean that I would buy it otherwise. Just because there were free icecream at a shopping mall, it doesn't mean that I would actually buy icecream if I had to pay for it. Those expected loss figures are always very misleading and only points in favor of the producer.
"...China has agreed to cooperate..."
Correction: Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Yao Jian has agreed to cooperate.
That's 1! Now they just need to get some of the other 1.3 billion to agree too!
Just like each corporate has huge "net loss". They predict (pull number out of their a..) huge sale of whatever they sell, and then later they announce net loss and their stocks drop as they didn't sell it like they expected. Well, there is something wrong with that picture. You can't estimate big volume sale and later complain that you have "net loss". Same crap with music industry. Just like someone said above, id it's free I'll take it, but otherwise don't expect I would pay for it and "cry" that you didn't make money of me.
Too bad Obama's plan didn't include that in his "change" and "hope" program.
I have some numbers here, could somebody help out?
$1=6.83 RMB Yuan
Windows XP pro OEM $135 in US, 1300 RMB Yuan(English version)in China.
Antec 1200 case $179/ Newegg.com , 1655 Yuan/newegg.com.cn
Intel Core i7 920 $294/neweg.com, 2299 Yuan/newegg.com.cn
Dell/HP/Lenovo Thinkpad, we can spend arround $600 to buy a nice laptop or desktop in US, withe same hardware deploy, in China you have pay at least 15% more.
In US, the average monthly income is about $2500, to spend $135 buy an OEM Windows XP is not really big deal, it's just like 5.4% of your wage of one month. In China, the average income of one month is arround 1500-2000 RMB Yuan, it's just $220-$292/month, according the number I just mentioned, can anybody give Chinese a reason to spend half of their monthly income to buy Windows XP or cost them whole number of money they just make for just one month to get some name brand such like Antec? I didn't see any. And, in US, if you are registered college student, you only need to pay $15 to buy Windows XP pro with both 32 and 64 bit, but Microsoft never give this special price to Chinese students, so why they pay a lot money to buy it?
tonychow, by your rationale, why should i pay for a diamond ring for my wife? its a lot of money, so i should steal it
OK, I'm from China.I want to point out one thing,
the Microsoft already made special price for their Chinese version system(both vista and xp). So he gain his market back year by year.
But as the writer said, most media is illegal, that's not only the Gov's fault. It also because the industry didn't take serous to China market.