Essay about Intellectual Property Rights and the Piracy War in China

Piracy has become a major issue in the United States. For every motion picture that has been featured in theaters also has been pirated onto the Internet the next day, and for every new musical album that is released, yet there is a free torrent file of the album within the same hour. Even though these online pirates steal music and movies from other companies and make a drastic profit, yet these “rogue” websites receive 53 billions visits a year from across the globe according to Creative America. The persistence of the thieves that break copyright laws of the productions has lead the entertainment business to place a definitive complaint to the U.S. government of the constant notion of piracy. While the notion of piracy was not left

Piracy has always been an issue for intellectual property owners. Piracy existed even as early as the 1500’s. In one famous instance, Renaissance artist Marcantonio Raimondi copied some of Albrecht Dürer’s works and claimed it was his own (Gambino, 2011). Politicians and content creators try to combat piracy with laws and lawsuits, but people engaging in piracy remain active and elusive. However, the development of the Internet has exacerbated this issue. Technological advancements, specifically the advancements in file sharing, have made the exchange of information extremely inexpensive, quick, and easy. People have direct access to unauthorized copies of millions of movies and songs due to programs such as Napster and Limewire. Thus, illegal

In the global market that we leave in companies are trying to find any and everyway that they can to get ahead in their respective markets. This most of the time brings out the most innovate thinkers that can come up with a way to keep it’s company on top of their market and sometimes we see that there are companies that like to take a short cut by using non legal and malicious methods. According to Lewis, (1985), Software piracy is the illicit copying of the operating instructions and applications programs, which make computers work, is a large and growing industry. The Pirate Bay is part of a European social and political movement that opposes copyrighted content and demands that music, videos, TV shows, and other digital content be free and unrestricted. In the words of the Pirate Party, “the Pirate Bay is a unique platform for distributing culture between regular people and independent artists, and that’s something we want to preserve.”

Today’s China is the most populous country in the world and is so one of the most important political and economical forces in the world.

Unlicensed software use continued to be a major problem in 2013. Indeed, 43 percent of the software installed on PCs around the world was not properly licensed, an uptick from 42 percent in 2011. The commercial value of the unlicensed installations was $62.7 billion. (The Compliance Gap, 2014). As we can see piracy of software and other digital media is a global problem that adversely affects many businesses and the welfare of employees and consumers.

In the few recent years, China has replaced United State to become the world largest economy. This Economic situation has opened an enormous number of opportunities for most industries to expand their operation from domestic market to international market. Shanghai, which is the China’s largest commercial and industrial city, focuses on 6 major industries which are information technology, automobile, large-scale electromechanical equipment, petrochemicals, heavy manufacturing and biopharmaceutical products (http://en.people.cn/200207/20/eng20020720_100055.shtml). With the virtually unlimited well-educated labour resources and the unique international location, Shanghai is

Piracy is already illegal and punished with heavy fines and possible jail time. Yet piracy still accounts for 23.76% of the total internet bandwidth worldwide.("Safe Internet", 1) This percentage is growing and is costing product creators more and more. Meaning product creators are finding a hard time to make new products when their sales are

A Worldwide Problem Software piracy is defined as the illegal copying of software for commercial or personal gain. Software companies have tried many methods to prevent piracy, with varying degrees of success. Several agencies like the Software Publishers Association and the Business Software Alliance have been formed to combat both worldwide and domestic piracy. Software piracy is an unresolved, worldwide problem, costing millions of dollars in lost revenue. Software companies have used many different copy protection schemes. The most annoying form of copy protection is the use of a key disk. This type of copy protection requires the user to insert the original disk every time the program is run. It can be quite

In recent years, Chinese government has also made great effort in executing these laws[1, 12]. Chinese government launched different anti-piracy campaigns almost every year. During these campaigns, Chinese government raided underground markets, confiscated million copies of pirate software, closed factories of manufacturing counterfeit intellectual products and destroyed hundred product lines. In order to fight against piracy more effectively, China established her first national anti-piracy organization, Anti-Piracy Committee, in October 2002[5]. Besides, Chinese Courts granted favor to many international companies in their case to sue Chinese companies for illegally using their patents, copyrights and other intellectual properties[1, 4, 10]. For example, Microsoft sued two Chinese companies for such abuse and won its case in a Beijing court in February 1999[10].

Online piracy is commonly referred to as a threat to businesses in the creative industries. The WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (a.k.a. “the TRIPS” agreement) defines piracy as:

The American Heritage Dictionary defines piracy as “the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted or patented material.” It is a problem that affects companies all over the world. Piracy of software, movies, and music is commonplace in China. China has the second worst piracy rate in the world; about 92 percent of the software in China is pirated (Williams 2004). Various companies and governments have attempted to combat piracy, but they had not seen much success until recent years. Combating piracy is a difficult task, especially in a country that has a history of not enforcing intellectual property laws.

In Taiwan 1997, music sales hit 12 billion in their country specific currency. That statistic dropped to 2 billion at 2012 due to the increasing amount of internet usage. (3) On further study via surveying usage, riskiness, and preferences of media, people told an activity is likely to get caught doing and has a large fine is 7% likely to continue performing. This statistic is vs 75% likely to continue performing illegal acts if low risk of getting caught and low fines. (3) Using this information, increasing estimated risk and increasing actual fines will have a great reduction in piracy (3). To do that, high schools and colleges need to push the possibilities of getting caught and the severity of penalties.

In today’s technological age and consumer-driven economy, there is no doubt that media piracy and file sharing are in demand and makes a big business. Not only the so called “bootlegged” materials cost less, but most of it also managed to completely imitate the quality of the original materials. It is much easier to people to download movies or music online or buy bootlegged DVDs for 5 dollars than to watch the movie in theaters or pay for the whole CD when there is only one song that the person likes. People know about the possible consequences of these actions, but they do not have a choice especially in these times of economy recession, plus everyone nowadays is doing it, so it would not be considered such a big deal at

The rise of the Internet era opened the whole new market for traditional media full of opportunities as well as threats. Online piracy being one of them because the music and film industry loses £5.4bn in a year and if it was reduced by 10% it could have created up to 13 thousand jobs in the UK. There are various attempts taken to fight with online piracy; a case study of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will be considered as well as other legislations attempting to regulate copyrights in the Internet. This

The main advantage of doing business in China is the fact that China has emerged as one of the world’s strongest economic forces, driven by the shear number of