China Seizes 13 Million Pirated Discs

TechFreep writes "The Chinese government is waging a 100-day battle against software and media piracy, the largest such effort ever conducted. After launching the effort on July 15, Chinese police and copyright officials have raided 537,000 illegal publication markets and distributors in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Liaoning Province. Of these, government officials have closed down 8,907 shops and street vendors, 481 publishing companies and 942 illegal websites." This article in China Daily quotes vendors of legal media products gushing over their increased sales.

um, that seems high

[svunt]

537,000 illegalmarkets and distributors? I know there are a lot of people in China, but damn, can that possibly be right? If they bust everyone, the US could lose its coveted "most behind bars" status.

My problem with this

[donatj]

My biggest problem with this is that the majority of this stuff is american, and its banned over there. They litterally can't get this stuff any way other than piracy, and yet the american movie companies are all for it. I don't understand it. I say if we're going to bring down communism we should do it via undermining their contries authority and showing them now the non-commies have it...

537,000 down...

[192939495969798999]

only 90 bazillion more to go! That picture from TFA is wild, though (mountain of CDs being crushed by steamrollers). That looks like some kinda explosion at a CD store.

High? Maybe Because It Has Another Use?

[eldavojohn]

Oh, don't forget this article [slashdot.org] that states they were going to send out one million spam warnings to spammers. One million spammers? Here in the United States, it seems to be 9 or 10 parties that create 99% of the spam. Why is it so different in China? Is one in every thousand Chinese citizens a spammer?

Perhaps this is just another law that China will use to silence people (like I mentioned here [slashdot.org])?

Speak out against the government and have your apartment ransacked for pirated DVDs. They find them everytime and you don't have to worry about a trial -- you were ready to distribute them! Makes the government look good and invites companies to come to China. Win-win situation for the government!

Re:Keep going...

[syntaxglitch]

Yes, but how much paying for American IP can China really support? I can't imagine that most users of pirated software over there could afford to pay full price for a legit license. Eliminating a lot of piracy seems like it would either wreak havoc on China (they won't push it that far, I'm sure) or, to take the typical /. angle, drive people towards other alternatives like open source (or perhaps local IP industries?).

More likely I think is that it's mostly a loud show of effort and piracy in China will continue unabated once the current effort quiets down.

In the end, we still need China more than they need us. :(

Movie companies care about dollars, not politics

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Movie companies, software companies etc, are more interested in dollars than some cold-war era politics. So you can't sell to them legally now? So what! In a few years things will likely soften and you'll be able to sell movies etc to China. When that happens you don't want a strong culture of copying. Besides, by ganging up with the regime, you're more likely to get a softened response and get the markets going sooner rather than later.

Very old news

[®!©]

Looks to me like TechFreep doesn't deserve to be slashdotted.
The article they are referring [chinadaily.com.cn] to was last updated on 2006-02-06! Which also means TechFreep edited the story considerably to add mention of recent dates. They even used the same Febuary photo.
Therefore I would not be trusting any information from this source.

Re:Keep going...

[Astro Dr Dave]

It is suicidal for America to not tie very strong IP enforcement to its trade agreements with countries like China. Most of what we produce domestically is IP [...]

...which just goes to show you that our economy is based on a house of cards. Seriously - an IP economy is inherently unstable, because it depends on the cooperation of everyone else (never mind that it also works better in a police state). So we strong-arm other nations to get their cooperation, but countries and people don't like having laws dictated to them via trade agreements. And for rapidly developing countries like China, it isn't in their best interest to have strict IP laws, which probably explains why this is only a "100 day" crackdown.

Discount

[pr0nbot]

Sweet! I guess this means that software will become much cheaper because the corporations won't be losing money in lost sales due to piracy!

Right?