Wing wing....hewoo, bwoken wekod?

Turns out China has a piracy problem. Who knew?

The funny thing is, the commies are now trying to combat it because it's totally cornholing their own industries. Kingsoft Corp., a Chinese software developer, makes an English-Chinese dictionary program that's used on most of China's 60 million PCs. You'd think they'd be happy about that kind of domination, being commies and all, but Kingsoft doesn't make any money from that dominance because 90% of those copies are pirated.

Oh damn, what's a country to do? Especially since the new mantra from Beijing is that they want to discard the image of being the world's cheap ass factory for making anything, to an "innovation society" that makes its own profitable technology and brand names. They're developing more and more products to expand their economy abroad, but this little "miniscule trading issue" has turned into a whopper of a dilemma.

You see, the Chinese have turned a blind eye to the piracy problem for years, regardless of how much we've howled about it. Europe and the U.S. have tried everything to get them to stop the problem, but found all diplomatic avenues scoffed at by the beauracrats on the red side. Why?

Well U.S. officials say China's exports cost legitimate producers worldwide, up to $50 billion a year in lost potential sales. Sidewalk vendors sell unlicensed DVDs of movies for as little as 50 cents. Software packages that could cost as much as $1000 dollars in the U.S., can be found for $3.00 anywhere in China.

But now China's fledgling creative industries are being hit harder than any of us. The theft of intellectual property in their key home market has translated into losses, so staggering, that they're no longer able to develop products to keep up with the new commie dogma of competing and innovating.

Chinese musicians say piracy makes producing new CDs so unprofitable that they are treated as just promotional material for concerts, which provide performers' real income.

Hell, at one point last year, a piracy ring got so big that it created an entire service wing for it's own division of NEC products. That's right, it hijacked the NEC name, logo, and products to such a degree that it set up offices for people to come purchase and receive service for their pirated wares. I'm not kidding. If you didn't hear about this story, check it out here, and here.

So I sit back and laugh my ass off at this because as an owner of intellectual property and copyrighted material (who fortunately doesn't get any Chinese attention...I mean, I'm a small time photographer) I find this story fascinating. Every time Chinese Communism begins to toot it's own horn, it eventually crumbles under the weight of its own crooked greed and idiotic planning. Anyone remember the Chinese Steel movement?

Fucking commies crack me up!