I find this hilarious. The US pressures China to step up its IP protection enforcement, and what does China do?
beta.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/2005041 … _us_piracy
It arrests 2 Americans in Shanghai for DVD, CD piracy and sentences them to jail along with a few Chinese co-conspirators. Classic political move.
:bravo: :bravo: Oh, the irony.
Good irony.
The problem with China is that they allow known operations to continue relatively unmolested. They will send a uniformed officer to check things out, but the officer moves on after 10 minutes and the bootleggers resurface. It’s a casual swat at a fly on someone else’s back.
DVD and CD pirates have a sort of Robin Hood status. The way to deal with Robin Hood is to burn down the forest.
If the PRC were serious about ending the problem they’d make it very uncomfortable for anyone who allows bootlegging near them or offer rewards for turning in bootleggers. 1000RMB for a good bust would probably do the trick…
But, then again, I’m no enemy of Robin Hood…
Interesting.
One thing that these Americans should not count on is any pressure from the American government to get them out. Why? Because it was the US Department of Homeland Security that ordered the arrest in the first place. 
The Yahoo article makes it sound like this was some kind of evil unilateral action by the PRC – maybe even a bit of an intentional “f*ck you” to the US in response to American pressure to protect IP rights. But this characterization appears to be more than a little unfair to the Chinese authorities.
Apparently what actually happened was that the Motion Picture Association of America launched an investigation into Guthrie (the American guy in charge of the scheme) back in 2002. When the MPAA had gathered enough evidence they went to the Dept. of Homeland Security (which now includes the US Customs agency) and said “Go arrest this guy. He’s stealing from us.”
The Dept. of Homeland Security in turn told the Shanghai police “Go arrest this guy. He’s stealing from the MPAA.” And the Shanghai police went and arrested the guy.
Here’s a PC World link that has a bit more of the full story. The most in depth article I’ve read on it, however, was from the Wall Street Journal, which unfortunately is not available online without a subscription. Anyway, if you can get a hold of a copy of yesterdays WSJ, the story is pretty interesting. Apparently Guthrie is the child of some wealthy New York family. Makes you wonder why someone who had so much going for him (financially at least) would risk going to jail in the PRC just to make a few extra bucks. Maybe he’s puiwaihin is right – maybe he’s just trying to be Robin Hood after all – providing cheap movies for the masses! 
thanks for the update. The yahoo articles certainly was not informative given your new info.
This seems better:
danwei.org/archives/001483.html
One of the Americans, [quote]Guthrie has been described by the New York Post as “the black-sheep scion of one of the city’s oldest, wealthiest and most socially prominent families”.[/quote]
Microsoft won’t be happy to hear you say that.
Help fight software piracy. Use Linux!
cheers,
DB
[quote=“puiwaihin”]DVD and CD pirates have a sort of Robin Hood status. The way to deal with Robin Hood is to burn down the forest.
But, then again, I’m no enemy of Robin Hood…[/quote]
Robin’s exploits were the result of a corrupt power-figure.
So the best way isn’t to address the corrupt power-figure? Humm, I’m surprised.
‘Burn down the forest’ but ‘I’m no enemy’ - WOW! I hope I’m never on your enemy list.
OOC
You could say the MPAA is corrupt and a power figure, too. You could also say Robin Hood’s exploits were popular because he was taking away from a rich elitist and giving to the poor. The poor tend to like that, especially when the target is corrupt.
You can’t address what you can’t find. He hides in the forest. You can’t find him. Burn down the forest. You can find him. Applies to the pirates. Make it so that nobody will want to let them set up shop in their areas.
Fear is good.
You could say the MPAA is corrupt and a power figure, too. You could also say Robin Hood’s exploits were popular because he was taking away from a rich elitist and giving to the poor. The poor tend to like that, especially when the target is corrupt.
You can’t address what you can’t find. He hides in the forest. You can’t find him. Burn down the forest. You can find him. Applies to the pirates. Make it so that nobody will want to let them set up shop in their areas.
Fear is good.[/quote]
Version 1) Robin Hood turns ‘outlaw’ because a corrupt official controls the throne. Richard returns, John is vanquished, Robin no longer has to ‘steal’ the unjust tax money to return it to the poor so they can eat. Problem solved.
Version 2) Robin hides in forest - burn down the forest. Environment suffers, woodcutters out of work, animals dead, Robin goes to swamp to hide. Taxes are raised to cover loss of revenue. Misery abounds.
I like the first approach much better.
MPAA/RIA are the corrupt entities. They tell me I only buy the right to listen to a song or watch a movie on one media. I paid for an LP album, an 8 track tape, a cassette copy, and a CD copy of CCR and now they tell me if I copy my son’s MP3 of the songs to my computer I’m breaking the law because I don’t have a license for the songs in digital format.
Even worse they say I’m causing the artists to starve because they are denied royalties from my lack of a license. They won’t discuss why they (the administrators) deserve a larger share than the artists. No the industry management is the evil party here. The rise of the pirates is only a logical reaction to grossly unfair and unreasonable industry practices.
Putting the spotlight on the real crooks and forcing changes - proper changes - in license sales, copyrights, and royalty payments is the right way to correct the ‘problem’ with Robin Hood.
Fix the problem not the symptom.
OOC
I remember when I was living in Xi’an, China, back in 1996. That was the summer that Clinton traveled to China, including Xi’an. About two weeks before he arrived, the Secret Service started making their rounds in their black SUVs, and the police quickly came in and shut down every illegal DVD/VCD/CD store and booth in the city … every last one of them … gone. Then, after Clinton made his trip and left, they all reappeared. The PRC has the ability to shut them down, but they won’t, because they’re making plenty of money out of this business too.
1996? Um, just to double-check, but didn’t Clinton travel to Xi’an and other parts of China in 1998?
Perhaps he made two trips to China, or perhaps this was just a typo. Just wanted to make sure.
It was the summer of 1998, which was the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college. If it had been the summer of 1996 then I wouldn’t have been in college yet! I don’t think I’d forget an event like that … it was big news … thanks for catching my typo!
No problem, LittleBuddhaTW.
I just wanted to make sure that I had my memories straight.
Thanks for clarifying that.
And back to the topic at hand, there is a somewhat interesting series of articles on slate.com about the “China gold rush.” I think it is called something like “Go East, Young Man.”
Henry Blodgett is the writer and he is sending updates back from Shanghai and Beijing. This one is about buying “fake goods” in Shanghai. Guthrie is mentioned in the article.
I’d like to read the story from the WSJ about Guthrie. I think this is a perfect story for a really well-written feature article or even a book.
[quote=“OutofChaos”]Putting the spotlight on the real crooks and forcing changes - proper changes - in license sales, copyrights, and royalty payments is the right way to correct the ‘problem’ with Robin Hood.
Fix the problem not the symptom.[/quote]
But that solution doesn’t sound so good if you’re the crook or their cronies.
Hence my “but I’m no enemy of Robin Hood” remark. All my comments to that point were from the perspective of the usurper.
If you were the MPAA you’d want to make it even more difficult for pirates to sell, and making it tough on anyone who is found harboring pirates would be a good way to do that. Slap hefty fines on people who rent places to pirates.
But I’d much rather see the music and video industry forced to change its practices.