China and Russia still piracy hotbeds, says US gov

The United States Trade Representative has slammed China and Russia as the world's worst offenders for stealing US intellectual property - again. The latest 301 report, available here as a large pdf, said China remained on the Priority Watch list because "high levels of copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting remain …

[Dunstan Vavasour]

"Piracy"

I know that the use of the term "piracy" for copyright and trademark infringement is now universal, but I read the article title and expected it to be about piracy on the seas, which is rife in the South China Sea.

Articles tend to be clearer if we use: "copyright infringement" to refer to copyright infringements; "trademark infringement" to refer to trademark infringement; "theft" to refer to property theft; and "piracy" to refer to violent theft of and from ships.

Mine's the one hanging in pedants' corner.

[Pete]

says US gov

Hey, you forgot your own country there guys!

[Ian]

They say it like it's a bad thing...

I see the fact that Russia and China don't bow down to the US copyright nazis as good sign that at least some countries along with Sweden and Canada wont just unfairly bow down and protect US commercial interests at the expense of their own citizens.

[g e]

Come ON David Shayler

Which assumes of course that the Yanks aren't running false flag cyber ops through compromised networks in those countries of course.

As if they'd EVER do something underhand like that.

Yeah right.

Mine's the one with the LAN cable unplugged...

[wim]

Streamlined outsourcing

It's not called piracy, copyright infringement, trademark infringement or theft. It is called streamlined outsourcing.

The jobs that are lost would be outsourced anyway to those countries so this is just a way to do things faster and cheaper. Look out for a price reduction in a wall mart close to you.

Is antigua already selling some good software ? I am looking for an antiguan Photoshop latest version if possible :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Iran oil bourse

USA says lots of things, but it really doesn't matter anymore. Russia wants to price it's oil in Rubles, Iran started pricing it's oil in Euros since Feb 17th 2008. USA is no longer a net exporter of oil since 2006.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/17/business/ME-FIN-Iran-Oil.php

Since you no longer need to buy oil on Nymex, you no longer need dollars, so you no longer need to sell goods to the USA, and no longer need to lend them money to buy your goods. If you don't need to sell to them on their terms, you no longer need to listen to their endless bleating about copyright.

Not that reducing piracy would ever have covered their trillions of dollars of debt anyway. Counterfeit IP goods were only ever 0.03% of measured trade anyway, so even a perfect world wouldn't fix their problems.

[heystoopid]

Funny

Funny , go back in history to 1815 and guess who was the worlds biggest pirate of IP and other peoples patents with paying one penny for them , for it was none other then the same direct ancestors to these wowsers residing in the very same land that writes this garbage now ?

Sad is it not , for those that fail to learn the lessons in history are but doomed to repeat the very same mistakes in an endless cycle for eternity !

"Idiocracy" rocks !

[Olof P]

@ AC

"USA is no longer a net exporter of oil since 2006."

The last time US was a net exporter of crude oil was in July 1944, according to the website. If you're talking about finished gasoline, it was in 1966. So the position of (net) oil importer is far from new.

[Paul Crawford]

counterfeiters don’t just steal ideas?

Interesting comment “Pirates and counterfeiters don’t just steal ideas; they steal jobs, and too often they threaten our health and safety."

While I agree 100% with protecting health and safety which is often compromised completely in knock-off goods, I find it difficult to take seriously that claim "they steal jobs" given that global companies effectively steal jobs by outsourcing to the cheapest bidder anyway (sometimes the same far east factories where a lot of 'fake copies' come from).

Protecting IPR/copyright is one thing but most countries, the USA in particular, define 'piracy' in terms of not playing *their* rules, even if the law in another country permits certain reasonable actions.

[Anonymous Coward]

10 dolla good time

This was exposed on BBC the problem is that the chinese have the designs, the factories and the raw materials, now we can get £30 frocks on the high street when the designers want £2k.

Outsourcing seems to have worked wonders, simly put we need to devalue our currency to that of the Ruble/Yen/Rupee.

With the curent government were doing quite well in this respect :)

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news...

Bear observed sh*tting in woods.

Pope admits to being 'catholic'

New labour considered 'idiotic' by majority of population.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ BKB

'Fake medicines can even kill people'

And over priced medicines to pretty much the same thing as well.

Also overhyped age old remedies just take money from people. eg must cough bottles just contain a pain killer and honey and then charge as if its liquid gold. Only recently did they actually say yeah honey is pretty much as good as it gets to ease a cough, funny think honey has been around for ages why did it take so long for them to say so.

[Anonymous Coward]

@BKB

Real medicines commonly kill people and/or screw them up worse than before.

[Stephen Jones]

@BKB

You'll often see news reports about counterfeit medicines, with all kinds of scary warnings about how they kill people. Then in the same article you'll see a story about medicines killing people. The formula is the same in many publications and gets repeated over and over. When you look a little deeper you'll see that the latter story always involves licensed medical production, and has nothing to do with fake medicine.

What exactly is a 'fake' medicine anyway?