China destroyed nearly 13 million pirated CDs, DVDs and computer software on Saturday as part of a 100-day intensive crackdown on piracy, according to the Ministry of Public Security.
The illegal products were confiscated nationwide, with six million from Guangdong, one million from Beijing, 1.88 million from Sichuan, 600,000 from Liaoning, 500,000 from Jiangsu, 750,000 from Fujian, 300,000 from Shandong and 230,000 from Henan, the ministry said.
The 100-day campaign started on July 25 and is said to be unprecedented in terms of its duration and number of government departments involved.
Police and copyright officials have raided more than 537,000 publication markets, shops, street vendors and distribution companies, and closed down 8,907 shops and street vendors, 481 publishing companies and 942 illegal websites in two months.
Local police in southeast China’s Guangdong Province alone had uncovered four major illegal CD and DVD production lines since the beginning of this month. And altogether ten illegal production lines have been busted nationwide this year, the ministry said.
I doubt if I need to explain why this is no surprise, why China has begun a thoroughgoing job at ending “neutrality” over intellectual property.
Pretty much all of us oppose DRM, etc. either as an affront to Fair Use — or as a pitiful tactic adopted by an industry that doesn’t begin to understand the advantages new technology might offer. But, China, like any other nation entering into full partnership with all the other nations engaged in global commerce, will adopt some of the conventions of that trade.
Memo to self: buy stock in Chinese blank media suppliers.
This is just an official gesture to please foreign Governments and companies. In reality, the production of counterfeit goods is alive and well. If you ever visit Beijing, visit Silk Alley… you can buy counterfeited CDs, DVDs, clothes, bags etc for a fraction of the price of what the real thing would cost (the quality isn’t always there though…). The police is patrolling the area, but don’t do anything to stop it.
13 million in 100 days? That’s only 130,000 per day, just a drop in the bucket in China. It makes a nice dog and pony show to keep the U.S. off their backs. Sadly, intellectual property is the only thing we have left to trade with the world, and it’s easily pirated. I’m sure we’d much rather have China spend all their surplus dollars on our music and movies instead of tangible commodities like oil.
Alcohol Prohibition black-market players, and now drug Prohibition black-market players, have been known to turn each other over to government enforcement agencies as a competitive tactic. In the US, some allege there is active black-market involvement by banks and politicians, which makes sense if you view black markets as a particularly pure form of capitalism. (No regulation, money rulez, and all that.)
I wonder if some very high-level Chinese power player has gotten newly involved in Asia’s digital black markets.
I hope they recycled that plastic 🙁
This is going HOUSE to HOUSE, and what they found SOLD…
This is nothing if they find THOSe selling and making the Disks…
This is like finding MJ smokers, and not the dealers, and growers.
Millions of disks out there, ALREADY SOLD material…Those making it probably took years to do it also…NOW they get to make MORE..
Darn… Now i can’t get my favorite DVDs for $ .50
Probably somebody forgot to pay their bribe this month!
13 million may sound like a lot, but I’m guessing it’s a pretty small percentage.
Still, I give some credit to China. Good for them to show they’re serious about intellectual property rights.
13,000,000 over 5,000,000,000 people is STILL less then 1%, its about 0.3 % WHICh really isnt bad.
It’s a photo op and a goad to the economy; many of these folks will have to head back to the black market to replace their twenty cent round-eye albums.
… and 50% were of the White Album.
Local police in southeast China’s Guangdong Province alone had uncovered four major illegal CD and DVD production lines since the beginning of this month. And altogether ten illegal production lines have been busted nationwide this year, the ministry said.
Reminds me of Sony’s argument for Blu-ray vs HD-DVD… that needing new equipment for Blu-ray was an advantage to reduce piracy, as the pirates couldn’t just upgrade their exixting equipment ala HD-DVD.
I agree with just about everything everyone is saying about this being an empty gesture… But I’ll say that this is piracy. This is what costs software makers, music studios, and DVD makers their revenue. It isn’t the downloaders, MP3 swappers, etc.
If the RIAA and MPAA would wake up to that instead of systematically attacking technology and tech users maybe they might start making some headway.
that’s a fantastic image, is there a higher-res version of it anywhere?
13,
And if they dropped ALL the money they spend on security and lowered the prices, Would there be a need for piracy??
Security is about 1/2 the cost of a CD/DVD.
Then comes advertising. Why should we pay for them to Advert to us, they should pay for it.(they used to). Im not into paying the extra $100,000,000 for adverts.
so after all that, we can drop the price of a NEW release, from $20 to Under $10….WOW, that I might pay for.
That $50 collectors edition of ST-DS9, would only be $25…Hmmmm??
what do you think?? And they Still make a profit, about equal to what they had before, and THEN they sell MORE.
Those $5 OLDy Moldy mosvies go for about $1 maybe $2…Insted of $7-10…
I will be impressed when the start crushing their knockoff of the Chevy its called the Chery.