May 30, 2007 12:00 PM PDT
Perspective: Piracy in China is smart, hilarious, critics say
See all Perspectives
- Related Stories
-
Asia warms up to intellectual property
August 23, 2006 -
Study: Software piracy costs $34 billion
May 23, 2006
If that were a real battle cry uttered in the Persian War, just think how much different Western Civilization would be today.
Instead, it's the slogan emblazoned in large letters across a pirated copy of the movie 300 that some guy in downtown Beijing wanted to sell to me. He wanted 20 RMB (China Yuan Renminbi), but the price quickly went down to 10 RMB, or about $1.30. He didn't realize the comic gem he was holding. The four or so other guys who pestered me tried to sell 300, too. Their copies had the same movie poster art on the cover, but with the more appropriate "We Die in Hell."
Although the Chinese government is trying to crack down on piracy, illegal software and movies continue to thrive. An estimated 86 percent of software here is illegal. In fact, in some ways it seems a little worse.
Five years ago when I was last here, you had to go into the store and ask for DVD movies. The clerk would then lazily tilt his thumb toward a cardboard box full of titles.
Now they're offered on the street more than in the past. Plus, the selection of movies is getting closer to the time they are playing in the theaters. It used to be you were mostly offered movies that had just been released on DVD or older films, like The Wild Geese and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Not now. The first guy who ran up when I got out of my cab tried to pawn off Spiderman 3 on me. (In fact, every vendor led with Spiderman 3). Then he whipped out Shrek 3. Both are in theaters and neither is on disc yet. Then he started in with the movies that just came out on DVD: Casino Royale, The Queen, and so on. There was hardly anything more than 11 months old.
"Do you have Harry Potter...the new one?" I asked.
No, but his friend standing next to him did--an unreleased movie and for the same $1.30 price as The Queen and Bernie Mac's The Cleaner.
As an experiment, I bought three: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (not due in theaters for several weeks), Shrek 3 (in theaters) and Children of Men (on DVD).
What were the takeaways from my shopping spree?
1. Piracy is a not just a bunch of random individuals. In a mile walk (admittedly, in an area known for touts), I got hit up at least five times for DVDs, once when a policeman was passing by. If everyone has the same movies, and in the same general area, there's some organization involved. And the government, while trying to crack down, seems to see this as a nuisance, at least on the street level.
Russia figures in here. Children of Men is in Russian. Shrek 3, meanwhile, is in English, but the credits are in Russian, so the cross-border trade is running smoothly.
2. On the other hand, we may not be dealing with a group of super criminals--or super consumers. If people were hawking copies of the Order of the Phoenix--a movie that's being kept under tight lock in a vault--on the street, the studios would clearly have some serious security issues. But no. It turns out that the disc is for Bibi Blocksberg, a German rip-off of Sweden's Pippi Longstocking dubbed in Mandarin with English subtitles. It's a multicultural fraud!
Shrek 3, the in-theater movie, was filmed by someone sitting in a theater. It's fuzzy and the light goes in and out, judging from the scenes I looked at. Pirated copies of this sort aren't going to put a huge dent in theater revenues, just as Rolex probably doesn't lose that many likely buyers to street vendors in Juarez, Mexico. In a sense, these guys are the best advertisers for the studios.
3. Still, you can see why DRM (digital rights management) is necessary. By contrast, Children of Men was pristine (except, of course, the Russian part). I also visited a "legitimate" DVD and CD store. They were selling Babel, a movie that came out last year, for 20 RMB. At around $2.60, that's nearly $18 off the normal retail price. Casino Royale cost 30 RMB. Both worked fine in a store demo. The store even had the original packaging.
4. There is a sociopolitical angle to this. An expatriate I was speaking to said that many of his Asian colleagues buy legitimate discs most of the time. But if the censors cut out profanity or sex, they will buy a pirated version copied from a U.S. disc. Sex and the City is bought this way. The desire to see the real versions doesn't justify piracy, but you can see why this makes it tough to eliminate.
5. The packaging on these things is a work of art. A few years ago, you'd get a disc in a sleeve--on one side there was the movie art poster. On the other, credits from another movie. In short, they looked somewhat hillbilly.
The pirates have upped their marketing and are aiming for a classier clientele. The Shrek 3 disc comes in a folding envelope that contains art from the same movie on both sides of the envelope. It even contains a blurb from David Ansen at Newsweek. "Smart and Hilarious," he said.
But if you read closely, you'll see that the director is listed as Joe Ptkya and it stars Michael Jordan. The sleeve of Children of Men lists as a bonus feature "all new deleted scenes" and a short on the making of Carlito's Way. Spencer Breslin is listed as the star. The typos alone make the packaging worth more than the sales price.
Anna Silk is the star of Order of the Phoenix. But the "Order" envelope also includes an ad on one of the inside panels for the pirated version of Spiderman 3 that the guy was selling, an interesting twist on cross-promotion. And the envelope may display an accurate version of what the legitimate movie art will look like. There's an ominous shot of Voldemort and his followers marching off somewhere in a scene that I don't recognize from the last movie.
Maybe they are all off to dine with the Spartans.
Biography
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. He has worked as an attorney, travel writer and sidewalk hawker for a time share resort, among other occupations.
See more CNET content tagged:
theater, piracy, Beijing, Phoenix Technologies, movies
So what does it justify? Does it justify mutiny?
There's a government there that is preventing people from freely getting information. The desire for freedom is the sytuff that justifies wars. People kill people to get freedom. Then if they succeed they celebrate it on the 4th of July or some other date, but you say it doesn't justify piracy?
I think even marketing tricks justify piracy. "Legitimate" versions are full of ads and other stuff like endless legal warnings that one cannot skip. This alone justifies getting a pirated copy without these annoyances.
Corporate profits are the most important thing now.
Privacy is the gravest sin one can now commit.
When you buy pirated software, you are paying criminals to steal cakes for you, so you can eat them for less money than buying them from the bakery and actually supporting the people that make the cakes.
These companies make movies. They want people to pay them for watching their movies. Or they won't have any money to make more movies. Same goes for TV, music, etc.
Unless you like eating stolen food, then by all means, dig in.
Actually when you think about it, prevention of piracy is all about copyright which the founding fathers put in the constitution. Same with government warnings - it is the spirit of the founders of the US that causes the government to give you a warning.
No it surely does not. It DOES justify you making a copy of your purchased disc, which you can choose to remove the warnings if you want - and the software to do so should be legal.
You can tear the cover off a book you buy, you can throw away the case for a CD... the MPAA and RIAA seem to think that just because something is digital, it entitles them to control how you use it. That is a fallacy that needs to be corrected in our legal system.
Many casual pirates seem to think that not liking the packaging, price or quality of a product entitles them to steal it. That is a fallacy that needs to be corrected in our societal system.
2. This doesn't justify DRM at all. All DRM does, as far as I can tell, is keep people from watching legitimate movies.
As soon as the <insert money-grubbing group of corporations with four-letter acronym here> come up with a new DRM or protection scheme, it gets cracked in a few weeks anyhow. I don't know the answer, but I know what the answer is not.. and thats DRM
the author said that the DVD ripped copy was pristine, while the version pirated from a theater was unwatchable. This is why DVD releases should be protected in one way or another (like DRM) since pirated DVD's ARE competition for legit DVD's while bootleg movies aren't really competition for actual theaters. I'm likely to agree with the author. I've been renting DVD's since the late 90s and I'm yet to be stopped by DRM from watching or enjoying a movie...so I don't know what you're referring to exactly. Sure the DRM will be cracked, but at least it prevents some casual piracy...If there was no DRM they would have to make blank media extremely expensive, which would suck a lot more I think.
America) instead of <insert money-grubbing group of corporations
with four-letter acronym here>.
They definitely have a well-refined piracy network. Isn't it interesting how the disc artwork and printed material is all ready to go by the time they are ready to produce the DVD? Isn't it amazing how they're able to have discs on the streets for sale within three days of a movie release? I remember when the Harry Potter movie was release before Thanksgiving one year (2001?), it was on sale in Beijing within a just a few days. For years, they have been extremely fast in getting movies from screen to disc.
DRM will not help. DVDs already have DRM! You are dealing with people who have the wherewithal to get around any kind of protection you might want to employ. In fact, based on the physical quality of the discs I have seen when visiting China, I would bet they're using the same technology to create DVDs as any of the companies hired by the movie studios.
The author mentioned that some movies were recorded in the theaters. This happens a lot. In fact, many people in China I know who buy these discs tell me that they often buy the early releases just so they can see the movie-- in spite of the fact that it might be recorded in a theater-- and then they buy the movie again once the DVD is released, since the pirates will immediately switch to providing the duplicated DVD to buyers.
DRM is not the key and will not stop these experts.
Piracy is not as serious in the US and, in fact, I do not even know where one can buy pirated discs in the US. While I am sure there might be some illegal sales here, they are harder to find, because the government controls it.
To China's credit, I have seen the police cracking down on these sellers, too. Several times, I've seen people selling pirated movies and music pack up and immediately start running within seconds. It is absolutely amazing how fast they can pack up and leave. About 30 to 60 seconds later, one to five police officers will walk by. My guess is that the pirates have people standing guard and they have some means of alerting each other when they spot the piracy police.
Hilarious is an appropriate adjective.
Only one thing will stop piracy - chasing down the pirates and prosecuting them.
The first industry on my list is software. Tell these poor Chinese people that Open Source software exists; that they don't have to decide between a month's salary, digital powerlessness, or the label of a criminal. Screw Microsoft and anyone else who would deprive these people of infinitely replicable goods for the sake of a few dollars. Information demands freedom, and I will fight for the sake of all who are hardest pressed to need such freedom, like the penniless citizens of Beijing.
Software, music, books, and movies are the intellectual air we breath. It's a shame people feel they must depend on corporate entities for it. If people were expected to fork up $2.00 for every thousand liters of air they took into their lungs, I think you'd see a lot of stealing happening there, too.
But I'm just a democratic socialist that gets worked up easily. You may direct the flaming to my email: ethana2@gmail.com, to ease the server load of these fine people at cnet. I'll assume they're not using IIS...
And despite my somewhat harsh tone and radical idealism, I wish you all a nice 24 hours, whether or not you feel compelled to be diurnal. ;)
Valuations have gone way overboard. And free market today means entrapping the consumer by blowing up numbers, getting more criminals on board (read co-sponsors, associates) so everyone can make more money - all gas.
I am in marketing, communications and I know how this **** works... someones whim and fancy. Someones market valuation and targets have been set... because he wants to upgrade to a new Prius this summer. How is it that studios, manufacturers are able to give hefty discounts during Christmas sale? Benevolence?
A 200 million dollar movie (which turns out like crap) gets marketed with a budget way over, bcos some one has seen dollar signs... and it turns out crap after I end up going to theater spending hard earned 20$ on the ticket...useless!
I buy a pirated version - check it out and if i really see its worth then I decide to pick up an original disc, or second hand DVD, or at a discount sale, or just let it go... who needs a personal copy of crap because it was marketed well.
The business models are changing... MySpace threw up a Lily Allen and many more follow. Piracy might not be the solution, but DRM isn't either.
You cannot weed out piracy as long as anyone is asking why the hell am i paying so much for this crap? what is it? let me try it before i buy it? Free market anyone?
I enjoyed your piracy post, but here is my slightly different point of view:
1. Your piracy rate for China is way too low. The people calculating these rates don't count some of the most flagrant and damaging categories of copyrighted material. My estimate would be closer to 96% than 86%.
2. Russia's rate is equally high. Unfortunately, many people consider it a slap in the face to their new American "friends" to steal their property (and then sell it back to them on the streets). And no one thinks Bill Gates deserves to pocket another 20 billion.
3. Asia isn't alone. The piracy rates in Brazil are also off the charts ... and who's really doing anything about it?
4. Finally, and I think this is the biggest ocntributor by far, both our largest technology companies, and our government, take hypocritical stands when it comes to piracy. Even our college students have noticed this in droves.
People who live in glass houses cannot afford to be caught throwing stones. The walls break down everywhere just the same ... whether it's in Asia, South America, Europe ... or right here at home!
For more on copyrights and piracy visit our web site at www.imageline2.com
Keep up the interesting work.
George Riddick
Chairman/CEO
Imageline, Inc.
griddick@imageline2.com
- Piracy in China what do you expect?
- by iseasygoing December 23, 2007 11:14 PM PST
- What do you expect, these stupid old hippies and yippies that are now fat old billionaires running corporate America think the world is flat and some grandiose whole earth catalog. Idiot Yale education that has no concept of history or geography, they forget that Yale was built with Drug money profiteered when the Brits hooked China on Opium,the smugglers funded Yale and the idiots running Corporate America and the 90 day attention span have no idea that to the Chinese 90 days is nothing and they think in terms of what is good for China and as for the US and our sycophantic CEO class it is no wonder that China is stealing America blind. So what is the communist party in corporate China doing? They are doing exactly what American corporate culture does, they are stealing and the attitude towards intellectual property is screw it, not their problem. When a nation like the United States allows stupid old greedy hippies in three piece suits to sell us on the idea that FREE TRADE is like some modern day flea market economy then this stuff will happen. The one thing the idiotic old Yippies and Hippies do not comprehend is FAIR TRADE, if they did they would not be taking down billions for companies they did not start selling ideas they did not invent and the US would not be the largest supplier of SCRAP METAL in the world sucking up to China who these idiots from Yale and Harvard would not have pumped up China with economic steroids and turned them into a economic Juggernaut
- Reply to this comment
-
(35 Comments)The problem with China is they are acting like they have a Harvard or Yale education and not like they have a GOOD education. So put that in your pipe and smoke it! We have gone from the Greatest generation leading things to the Stupidest generation leading things and don't trust anyone between 59 and 74 with anything that has to do with common sense they don't have it. Look at the mess this country is in, SCRAP METAL IS our number 1 export!