Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Actually, copyright is very much a European concept. One of the big reasons that there is so much copyright piracy in the various non European countries some of which really aren't what one would call third world, is that there is no real concept that supports it. China has a long and rich literary tradition, but absolutely no historical concept of things such as copyright or even plagiarism. Historically, the Chinese see absolutely no issue with taking a work, filing off the name making a few changes and presenting it as their own or better yet, take something they wrote and attribute it to a famous historical figure.
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Where do you get this stuff from? This is the kind of misinformation being spread by those that would like to see all copyright abolished. See below, my source is Fan Zhang:
"As inventors of printing technology, the Chinese began official copyright protection in 1068 when the Emperor of the North Song Dynasty issued an order forbidding reproduction of the "Nine Books" without authorization. Guo Zi Jian, an official publisher of the Tang Dynasty, published the books in 932. The publishers of the Song Dynasty first became aware of copyright protection. For example, when a certain Mr. Cheng of Meishan, Sichuan, printed the book Stories of the East Capital, the "copyright page" of those days said, "Printed by Cheng of Meishan, who applied protection from the
superior, any reproduction is prohibited."
So this was almost 500 years before the first case I know of in European history (1523 in Spain).
Don't take the current copyright mess in China as being "based on history". The current mess is simply the byproduct of the last 25 years of unrestricted capitalism and an education system that didn't value creativity. Thus no new products were developed but existing products were copied in a spiral to produce shoddy products at the lowest cost.
Now China is getting serious about copyright because it is starting to affect development of their own industries. China's labor costs are getting too high to just rely on being the cheapest producer and the people demand better wages. Strong IP and patent protections are necessary for China's future path to become a developed nation.