|
< Previous
Next > Chinese Piracy.
Arrrrr... "To steal a book is an elegant offense." That is an
old Chinese saying that gives rise to the mindset prevalent in much of China permitting
the rationalization for unbridled copyright and patent infringement amongst the
population. According to the Business Software Alliance, 92% of all software loaded
onto PCs in China in 2003 was illegally obtained. The Motion Picture Industry estimates
that only 5% of movie DVDs sold in China are legitimate. A pirated DVD costs around
80 cents - "...literally cheaper to buy than a bowl of rice." In fairness, I will
point out that software thievery in the U.S. is estimated at around 22% and in western
Europe at 36%. However, unlike in the U.S. and western Europe, China only very recently
has begun to pass legislation making piracy a crime. They did so only due to extreme
pressures applied by international trading partners. Life behind the impenetrable
Iron Curtain justified just about any form of exploitation of the rest of the world's
accomplishments. If it were not so utterly serious, some of the shenanigans
would be downright comical and worthy of praise for the perpetrators' sheer ingenuity.
Take for instance the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in a northeastern Chinese
city. While on a trip to China scouting out potential locations for a KFC restaurant,
a corporate team from the U.S. came upon one already in operation. Employees wore
the proper uniforms, the logos were faithful replicas, the menu duplicated the ones
back home, and even the cardboard likeness of Colonel Sanders that greeted hungry
Chinese customers at the door was the spitting image of the founder himself. It
was a model operation from top to bottom. The only problem was that the entire business
was an illegal facade with no ties whatsoever to the real KFC. Then there
is the Cherry Automobile Company's knockoff of the Chevrolet
Spark. According to
reports, the car is an exact copy from "headlights-to-tailpipe." A lawsuit brought
by GM Daewoo & Technology Company, of Inchon, Korea, was required to put a stop
to it. Many of the offenders are not easily intimidated even when confronted directly
by legitimate complainants. Even the state-run prisons have been caught producing
Sony PlayStation 2 game console replicas to the tune of 50,000 copies a day (that's
right, 50k)! As the U.S. and other countries pour seemingly endless amounts
of technology in the form of hardware and intellectual property (IP) into China,
the potential for exploitation grows with equally endless bound. It is no conspiracy
theory borne out of paranoia that claims China's Red Army, still sworn to old ideals
of world domination, has agents engaged in sabotage and trade secret theft clandestinely
installed in factories and corporate headquarters all over the globe. Back in "the
good old days," Iron Curtain countries like the Soviet Union states and China relied
on procuring advanced microchips by removing them from scrap products obtained from
the outside world. I still remember the news about the discovery of huge shipments
of talking dolls going to the former USSR for the purpose of removing the speech
synthesizing ICs. Today, Pentium-quality processors are manufactured right in China.
Factories for developing and assembling state-of-the-art aerospace technology for
advanced fighters and bombers, satellites and ICBMs have been provided by Western
corporations and governments for two decades. It is a military build-up planner's
dream come true. Being generally an optimist, though, I see an upside. As
the Chinese people gain access to the rest of the world through exposure in the
factories, foreign movies, radio and television broadcasts, and ever-increasing
freedom of travel, they are becoming desirous of more of the creature comforts and
freedoms that they witness elsewhere. A new generation took its first real stand
against the oppressive and empirical iron fist of the Communist government at Tiananmen
Square in 1989. Brave young souls lost their lives there in a wanton and public
slaughter by the Red Army at a time when ubiquitous communications was getting a
foothold, and the 24-hour news cycle was beginning to take off. The genie was out
of the bottle, so-to-speak, and the world could see the brutality of the Communist
system. Nearly simultaneously, Berlin's famous east/west wall of separation between
freedom and oppression was crumbling. Hopefully, this budding free and open
society that seems to be the general populace of China will be less willing to indulge
the breast-beating, saber-rattling generals of the old guard. Maybe most Chinese
citizens do not really want to risk nuclear war with the United States by attempting
to attack Taiwan. Maybe most Chinese citizens do not really like their government
abetting other cruel Communist regimes like North Korea, just to be a finger-in-the-eye
of the U.S. and Europe. We can only hope this is the case. Until we know for sure,
though, we must protect our interests by seriously considering which types of technology
and how much of it to hand over. After all, you would never give a suspicious-looking
stranger a loaded gun.
|
"