Wednesday, July 05, 2006
The Daily China Picture
Both Poseidon and the Da Vinci Code were available in Shanghai for less than the price of a latte. This picture was taken on June 21, only a few weeks after their North American theatrical release and many months before the DVDs will be available in the United States.
The TigerHawk Son very much wanted to buy a big stack of pirated movies, but we insisted that he sit through our no doubt tedious lecture on intellectual property and understand that if did buy pirated DVDs he would be stealing, morally if not legally (and probably both). On reflection he decided against it, which made his parents very proud.
10 Comments:
By 
Pile On®, at
Wed Jul 05, 05:27:00 PM:
Tell you son Pile is proud of him too (that will make his day).
A couple of thoughts. First it is my experience that the Chinese really don't see anything wrong with this as long they pay as little as possible for whatever pirated good they are purchasing.
My wife's chinese friends laugh at me when I won't allow them to watch a movie that someone has burned a copy of and is passing around the office.
Second, am I supposed to beleive that in a country where they control so many aspects of life that the government can't do something about this?
When they figure out this is going to hurt Chinese industry the most, maybe they can be something besides the worlds low cost producer.
By K. Pablo, at
Wed Jul 05, 08:48:00 PM:
Tigerhawk Son might also reflect on the fact that the pirated DVD's probably won't play on the home DVD unit. Those Chinese DVD's are usually PAL format (rather than what we use here in the U.S.: NTSC). Some of them are "CD movies" which will only play on a PC.
Did you hit him with the argument that Chinese economic development is retarded by their inability to safeguard intellectual property, and that by obtainining a bootleg he would be perpetuating some of the poverty he no doubt witnessed?
Anyway, can't chat now... I have to go download season 2 of The Office from the P2P network of my choice....
By 
, at
Wed Jul 05, 08:55:00 PM:
I am one of the guilty ones, and I know how terrible what I'm doing is. Here in South Korea the pirated movie situation is the same. And as much as I am all for intellectual property rights (er, in the States I was), most DVD stores don't have anything other than the big blockbusters(same for the theaters), so if you want a decent movie that's not Harry Potter, you go to the pirate guy. I suppose there's always Amazon.com if you want to pay double for shipping. It serves me right that the quality of the movie is often quite terrible. I have a lame system. If the movie is good, I go buy the higher quality one off the net. I did this with that show "Lost." If it sucks, like the movie "Edison," I return demanding them that they pay me triple because I had to sit through that and throw those hours of my life away. ;) You did the right thing with your kids. But try living in a country like that for a while. After a while, I lowered my high moral standing and opted to be entertained. I am a weak, weak man....
By , at
Thu Jul 06, 02:08:00 AM:
Piracy isn't theft. That doesn't mean it's not wrong in many cases, and it certainly doesn't mean it isn't a crime. It's not like walking off with a fifve-finger discount from your local video store. It's not like taking supplies from your office. In the worse cases, studios lose potential profit through piracy, but they never lose actual assets like victims of theft do. More importantly, however, much of what is pirated doesn't represent any loss to the studios because it never would have been purchased in the first place. Do you really think that Adobe is really hurting because thousands of people have downloaded Photoshop (historically, one of the most pirated pieces of software) for their home systems? Would any of those people paid the $500 sticker price for a legitimate version were pirating not an option? Or would they have just gone without, maybe making do with an open-source alternative? The point isn't to argue that piracy like that example is right. If you're going to make the argument that it's wrong, however, you're going to have to come up with a better reason than it hurts the studios' bottom lines. As far as I can tell, most piracy doesn't hurt anyone. No doubt, some people pirate things they would have otherwise bought, but the genreally lower quality of pirated goods usually protects against that.
By , at
Thu Jul 06, 03:59:00 AM:
Anon.20847 AM:
How glib. A defintion is listed below for your elucidation. Twelve lines of text in your response to support thievery.
Are you a lawyer or just pretending to be one.
Def:
Robbery committed at sea.
A similar act of robbery, as the hijacking of an airplane.
The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material: software piracy.
The operation of an unlicensed, illegal radio or television station.* American Herirage dictionaries.
By Fausta, at
Thu Jul 06, 10:43:00 AM:
I applaud your decision.
And, all of the above DVDs are available on Canal St.
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Jul 06, 10:50:00 AM:
rpd -
I'm no big fan of the long duration of copyrights, but the long duration is not a justification to pirate software. Virtually all software is obsolete within just a few years, so the long duration is virtually irrelevant. Nobody pirates old software, and nobody cares if they do.
Now, I don't want to get too sanctimonious about piracy. This blog has probably pushed the limits of "fair use" from time to time, and when I was in Asia as a student I was known to buy the occasional pirated cassette tape in the stalls in Bali. That does not make it right, though. Authors, artists, composers and programmers are entitled to receive the economic benefits of their work, and pirates are thieves. It seems very hard to get around that.
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Jul 06, 10:54:00 AM:
rpd --
The idea that copyright infringement isn't "theft" because it is merely violating "someone else's government granted monopoly" is, sorry to say, ridiculous. In most countries your right to use the real estate under your home is nothing but a government granted monopoly. That doesn't make its wrongful use any less trespass.
By Jason Pappas, at
Thu Jul 06, 01:55:00 PM:
A father who successfully encourages the cultivation of moral sensibilities in his children! How refreshing!
By , at
Thu Jul 06, 09:52:00 PM:
But no one calls trespasisng theft. It's a completely different crime. Perhaps better, perhaps worse, perhaps the same, but certainly different. Just like piracy. It's not stealing; it's piracy. Just because you find stealing wrong doesn't mean you should necessarily find piracy wron, or vice versa.
And to davod: I think the context made it clear that I wasn't talking about marine piracy. That is indeed theft. But even your definition doesn't call the kind of piracy we're talking about theft. Maybe because it isn't. Apparently I haven't made it clear enough yet, but I'm not saying piracy isn't a crime, only that it's not the same crime as theft. There are plenty of crimes that aren't theft.
