It somewhat amazes me that I’m still surprised when I hear of blatant copyright infringement by Chinese companies. I mean, am I naive to think this crap is ever going to improve? Is there something culturally missing in China that causes its people to be completely ignorant to the idea of “ownership” and OPS?
I mean, tell me we’re not still letting one of the most capitalist countries in the world off by them playing the “we were communists, everything was state-run. We don’t understand your Western ways” card.
The thing that’s got my knock-off Fruit of the Looms in a bunch is this post from China Expat’s blog. In the post Josh explains that he discovered that the multi-million dollar organization, the Confucius Institute, has been blatantly stealing their content.
The Confucius Institute “is a non-profit public institute which aims at promoting Chinese language and culture and supporting local Chinese teaching internationally through affiliated Confucius Institutes.” They’ve branches all over the world with the most in the US (15), Japan (6) and the UK (5).
You don’t have to be a long-dead Asian thinker to realize how bad it looks for A) a non-profit, B) with strong government ties, and C) a cultural heritage moniker to be pushing China’s already tarnished IPR reputation even further into the mud.
As of this writing, it appears that the copied material has all been taken down. Fortunately, China Expat took some screen captures to back up their case if the fit hits the shan. From the post:
UPDATE
Looks like The Confucius Institute is in full-force damage control mode. This apology was e-mailed to Dan at China Law Blog:
We are extremely sorry for our infelicitous act. We have offered China Expat a frank apology for the use of China Expat’s articles without their permission. We have now removed all of the articles that you cited from our webpage.
The Confucius Institute Online website is still in its testing phase. At this stage of its development we regret any mistakes that we have made.
We have disciplined all staff involved with the mistakenly used content. The person who was primarily responsible for mistakenly using your articles is no longer working with us.
Please accept our sincere apologies.
Sincerely
Confucius Institute online
Hey Ryan,
It’s really a shame – they had six articles up from my blog and 50+ from Josh’s – didn’t see any from yours but they were probably in there somewhere as well.
But there are advantages to this system as well… not that I have taken them (Western books on the street for 10 RMB a pop, 5 RMB DVD 5’s, massive amounts of not-so-legal downloading of tv shows and whatnot)
I agree, there are advantages – and I’ve more than my share of pirated DVDs.
I realize there’s a bit of hypocrisy in me being critical of something I take part in on some level.
However (and I realize this is going to raise all sorts of “where’s the line?” arguments), I feel there’s a distinct difference between a private citizen going out and taking part in the piracy trade by buying something readily available, and a multi-millon dollar “non-profit” business stealing the work of small business or private citizens.
I know some will say “wrong” is “wrong” and “theft” is “theft”… and they’re likely the same people touting minor marijuana offenses as being equal to smuggling kilos of coke – all while popping Valium and downing it with a swig of Baileys.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s a grey world. But what the Confucius Institute did (and has yet to apologize for) is all black.
The reason I don’t feel bad about buying pirated DVD’s is because you wouldn’t be able to buy the real thing in china anyways. China only lets in something like 20 foreign movies a year, which is pretty slim. The movie studios in America should focus more of their energy on convincing China to let in more movies, rather than scream and shout about pirated DVD’s, since the real thing can’t be legally sold anyways. It would be like Columbian drug lords upset at americans using fake cocain instead of the real thing. As long as the real stuff can’t get in legally, people are going to buy the fake stuff.
Is there such thing as fake cocain? Probably a silly example, anywho.