My son recently made a model of the Great Wall of China for his fifth-grade class. It was pretty impressive, right down to the Lego skeleton men he had emerging from the wall (he taught me that as construction workers died, they were just buried in the masonry). That wall, begun in the 5th Century B.C., was perhaps the largest construction enterprise in world history, and was intended to keep out barbarians. You can never completely repel a Mongol horde, but various Chinese dynasties enjoyed peace and prosperity that wouldn’t have been possible without the result of the efforts to build that wall.

China has shown less interest in repelling hordes of pirates that can be found on any street in urban China, pushing counterfeit DVDs, CDs, software, books and plenty of non-media counterfeit products as well, from watches to soap. Not even a metaphorical equivalent of a paper wall exists in China to protect copyright owners, and that’s why nearly two years ago the U.S. filed a World Trade Organization complaint against China, arguing it was in violation of the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement. Yesterday, a WTO panel largely sided with the U.S.

Here was our statement:

“The USTR is to be congratulated for prevailing over China with the World Trade Organization in this very important case for all U.S. artists and creators.

“It is unfortunate that the proceeding took so long to conclude, as copyright owners have continued to be harmed by China’s practices during that time. It is further unfortunate that we won’t see immediate remedies as a result of this decision. Still, this is a seminal decision.

“The Chinese government has been passionate in its words but passive in its deeds when enforcing intellectual property rights. It was just this kind of lax enforcement that many feared when Congress debated approving China’s entry into the WTO. If that vote in favor of admission is to be proven the right one, China will have to step up to its trade obligations. It must actively seek to protect the rights of artists and creators and eradicate the lawless piracy market it currently hosts and protects. The creative community will be watching China’s actions closely.”

Specifically, the WTO panel found China in violation of TRIPS’ Article 9 and its Berne Convention language that foreign copyright owners will receive the same rights as domestic copyright owners. Just contrast the way China protected their Olympics mascots while allowing sales of pirated works from other countries to appear everywhere during the Olympics.

China was also faulted under TRIPS Article 41.1 for not having effective laws to target infringement.

As I said in my statement, it’s taken too long to get to this point, and who knows if this will lead to the improvements it should. I do know this — when then-President Bill Clinton pushed through WTO membership for China, many of us anticipated just this kind of problem. Regular readers will know I’m a huge trade advocate, but that assumes trading partners play by rules that apply to all parties. Russia hopes to join WTO, but has been looking the other way as Russian firms sell unlicensed MP3s for pennies and then pay royalties to a Russian collection agency that never pays out to artists. Fortunately the U.S. has for now put the brakes on Russian ascension to WTO for that and other reasons.

The critical success of “Slumdog Millionaire” has been matched by rampant piracy of the movie, leading some in India to recognize that if the country wants to create and export quality films, of which it is certainly capable, it must have a financial incentive system that copyright brings. The traditional Bollywood model involves inexpensive productions that make a few bucks before the pirates get a hold of it, but that has increasingly been seen as not a good model for either culture or economic growth, as Indian filmmaker Bobby Bedi put it last year. Strong copyright laws help protect our artists abroad, yes, but they also encourage local creativity, and everyone benefits from that, including those of us who love foreign films.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 3:51 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright law, counterfeit, creators, economy, international, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.