When it comes to copyright piracy, the so-called anti piracy
industry players have absolutely no clue who their real friends are. In fact,
these intellectual property rocket scientists invest tens of millions in bringing
software piracy or copyright violation lawsuits against their top consumers while rewarding those who blatantly steal
the highest volume.
The latest brilliant move? Our top-of-the-line piracy friends in China
are going to be able to purchase American DVDs for three bucks—that’s $3. Let’s
see. This would be China—the
world’s leading source of pirated movies. This would be the country with the
highest percentage of intellectual property and copyright violations in the
known galaxy. Think I’m relatively insane? No, I’m not insane, I’m mad. Once
again, the good guys are getting
hammered while the "bad" guys get
rewarded. Check out the original washingtonpost.com article by Joe McDonad
(The Associated Press) HERE! Or, read on for more details.
Who do we thank for the really great Chinese national DVD
discount program? “It’s our way of fighting piracy,” says Tony Vaughan. He’s
the managing director for CAV Warner Home Entertainment in China.
Um… Tony, old buddy… Why is it that the anti piracy kids “fight piracy” in the
United States and other developed countries by suing consumers into submission
while they “fight piracy” in China by reducing the price of products to what
many of us believe is their actual value?
Let’s see… The United States
has one of the absolute lowest piracy rates in the world. China
has what is unarguably the highest piracy rate. Let’s do this: We’ll fight
piracy by practically giving away our products to the poor downtrodden Chinese counterfeiters.
Then, naturally, we can up the price and Americans can pay a tad more so our
profit margins aren’t impacted by our new "anti piracy" discount program. If it works in the States we can
raise the prices in Europe too.
Hello? Paramount?
Warner? Are you people living on some other planet--sucking vacuum? Oh, wait a second, I nearly
forgot: Those discounted DVD releases? Our ethical friends in China
will be able to purchase their movies as little as two months after the U.S.
theater release. The rest of the world—that would be those of us who play by
the rules—we’ll have to wait to get ours until you've financially sucked us dry with theater & rental costs. But, it's OK. We’ll continue to pay full price
(or so).
Maybe you anti piracy experts could benefit from a little
“exchange rate reality orientation.” Try this:
$3 USD = Roughly
22.3284 CNY
Conversely, are you telling us that your $3 Chinese
DVDs are actually:
$3
USD? or are they selling for 3 CNY?
The reason I ask is that 3 CNY is roughly equal to:
0.403074
USD
Are you people honestly going
to sell freshly released American DVDs in China for around 40¢ ???
Here’s a great idea. Let’s start a Chinese video resale
enterprise. We can buy perfectly legal DVDs in Beijing
for $3 ($.40?). We’ll toss the DVDs into a shipping container along with a couple
hundred thousand lead-laden toys heading for the States (or Europe). When our ship hits the
San Francisco wharf, we’ll sell our
$3 CNY DVDs for $12 USD. Oh, wait, if we purchase in volume we can probably snag the
Chinese products at half the retail price. Ah…the profits…
Lesson Learned: The bigger the crook, the bigger the crock.
Lesson NOT Learned: You can’t buy friends.
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