The concept of intellectual property rights (IPR) did not develop at the same time nor happen overnight in the rest of world; on the contrary, it took decades for the culture to develop and be accepted worldwide.

The ideas of copyrights, patents, and trademarks first arrived in China in the late 1800s, yet wars, rebellions, and revolutions all squashed the ability for China to develop the protection for IPR. In fact, the stealing of a book was seen as an ‘elegant’ offense within China, a forgivable offense as the person is trying to acquire knowledge—something valued by society.

With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and the removal of private property this reversed and prevented any trends towards the development of an IPR culture. Only until the 1980s with the PRC’s acceptance of a market-based economic system did the PRC begin to establish rules around IPR.

Even with a rapidly growing software industry over the past decade in China, China’s software industry is definitively smaller and far less profitable than it should be. With pirated software accounting for over ninety percent of installed computer software, the loss in profits has been overwhelming to the domestic software industry. As such, the some firms within the industry have formed the China Software Alliance modeled on the US Business Software Alliance in an effort to promote awareness over copyright issues and push to change existing laws and policies for the software industry.

Yet, the software industry’s power is relatively small as the CSA took a very conciliatory approach and refrained from openly criticizing various government agencies responsible for cracking down on piracy and drafting the new copyright law, with much of the pressure from China came not through the domestic software industry, but by the US government through China’s joining of the World Trade Organization.

So what would be some business incentives from a pro-IPR perspective? Having copyrights on software allows companies to protect their code and the way they made the software in order to protect profits as without it other companies could directly copy the software and sell the software for cheap—like generic drugs. Other companies may make a worse software if not protected, making it seem like the original product was poor to begin with, reducing the company’s brand image. Without copyrights, companies would have few incentives to produce or charge cheaper prices if the risk of copying was extremely high.

I created a powerpoint presentation on this topic back in 2004 for a telecom class specifically on the China piracy debate.

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So much for Baidu getting preferential treatment as I mentioned before as Universal, SonyBMG, and Warner are now suing Baidu for violating copyright laws:

Three global record companies have launched legal proceedings against China’s top Internet search engine Baidu.com Inc, accusing it of violating copyright by giving access to music files, an international music trade body said.

Universal Music Ltd, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Hong Kong) Ltd and Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd have asked a court to order Baidu to remove all links on its music delivery service to copyright-infringing tracks that they own the rights to, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in a statement.

The claims have been filed with a court in Beijing, said IFPI, which is backed by global music industry heavyweights.

Of course, filing a claim is the easy part and will be a long road in trying to prove their case.

(more…)

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I always have enjoyed pointing out to people how to get free Chinese music from Baidu, then showing them how you can get it from Yahoo! China, but not Yahoo! US. It was really only a matter of time that the big record labels caught on and did something about this:

 Yahoo! China lost their appeal to the Beijing Higher People’s Court who upheld a lower court’s ruling in April that the company had violated copyright laws. Yahoo! China has insisted all along that it only provides links to websites for music search results and they should not be held liable for content provided by those third-party web sites.

And of course, Baidu gets preferential treatment:

Meanwhile, Baidu.com successively won the first and second round of their trial. Seven label companies filed the lawsuit against Baidu.com for infringement of their music copyrights. Baidu.com, like Yahoo! China had been insisting that the responsibility lied in the third party websites that provided the illegal music downloads. The local court in Beijing ruled that the music download service offered by Baidu.com was in fact legal.

Early this year, Baidu and EMI signed a strategic partnership deal for online music streaming and download services. Baidu is now authorized to stream EMI Chinese music on its music search channel. EMI Music, the world’s largest independent music company, will share the revenues generated by the advertising.

Goes to show how far nationalism and market strength can go towards helping keep various services for search engines (in case you didn’t know, a lot of Chinese citizens use Baidu for music).

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I am a very literal person, so much at times that my parents once suggested I go into International Copyright Law (tempting as I love reading about the WTO, but uhm…. no). Still with my thoughts straying into odd areas and how to get out of trouble (usually about something minor I have said or done) I sometimes jump onto topics such as this one about a potential way to use and abuse fair use to legally send out movies via bit torrent or p2p networks.

Now, I want to quickly clarify that I am not and expert in law much less copyright laws, DRM, or other annoying RIAA/MPAA legalities. Also, feel free to read up about how variable the ground is with the legal definition of fair use over at Wikipedia and the four fair use factors (courtesy of the University of Texas System) one should consider:

 There is no simple test to determine what is fair use. Section 107 of the Copyright Act*** sets forth the four fair use factors which should be considered in each instance, based on particular facts of a given case, to determine whether a use is a “fair use”: (1) the purpose and character of use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes, (2) the nature of the copyrighted work, (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

More to the point of this entry is set around the following 30 second usage of music, lyrics, or music videos (courtesy of UTS again):

Up to 10%, but in no event more than 30 seconds, of the music and lyrics from an individual musical work (or in the aggregate of extracts from an individual work), whether the musical work is embodied in copies, or audio or audiovisual works, may be reproduced or otherwise incorporated as a part of a multimedia project created under Section 2. Any alterations to a musical work shall not change the basic melody or the fundamental character of the work.

So, here’s the first legality question: What prevents a non-profit company for educational purposes pulling together all sorts of videos onto their system, using a program to split out a full 2 hour movie into 30 second “fair use” clips for students to download and discuss (eg: assignment is to choose any 30 second clip and write some monologue about that)?

If such a system can be created legally, then essentially a system similar to the old Napster could be created to store all these fair use videos for educational purposes. And once that’s set up all that is needed is for some computer software genius to create the software that can sort, merge, and produce a flawless movie back together again (that would be the “for-profit” side that is of course legally separated from the non-profit company). Granted, the software program could be declared illegal (remember the eBook hack presentation and subsequent arrest? Or the PDF hack?), but once out that program would be quite hard to stop from spreading around the web regardless.

In any case, that is just food for thought and if anyone does carrying this out (assuming it’s a legel loophole), an appreciative kudos would be welcome.

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