ITC Report: China's Ineffective Piracy Policies Cost Americas Millions of Jobs
ITC Report: China's Ineffective Piracy Policies Cost Americas Millions of Jobs
Posted 05/19/2011 at 1:30pm
| by Paul Lilly
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In a new report, the International Trade Commission called out China for its rampant piracy problem and "indigenous innovation policies" for costing the U.S. economy up to $48 billion in 2009. The report also blames China for costing Americans 2.1 million full time jobs that would otherwise be created if China substantially improved its intellectual property rights policies.
The ITC report confirms what the software industry has long known: The Chinese practice of ignoring the intellectual property rights of US innovators harms our nation, puts a drag on our economy and siphons jobs away from Americans," said Business Software Alliance President and CEO Robert Holleyman, who testified before the ITC during its investigation. "The report establishes in clear terms that these practices harm every innovative American industry. We look forward to working with the Senate and the ITC to find meaningful and effective ways to preserve the rights of American innovators in international markets."
But are the numbers accurate? TechDirt took serious issue with the ITC's "ridiculous" and "dopey" methodology.
"Rather than taking any sort of actual objective study, the ITC simply asked 5,000 companies for what they thought their 'losses' to Chinese infringement were," TechDirt complains. "Not only that, but the ITC tried to choose the firms who were most likely impacted by this -- which means those who have the highest incentives to lie or exaggerate, because they want to have greater protectionism against Chinese competition."
You can read the entire report here (PDF).
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newegg911
May 20, 2011 at 7:35pm
Obviously piracy costs companies money,but they are WAY bigger fish to fry. Maybe if you stopped outsourcing all the jobs and all the patent trolling and silly intellectual property suits, that may help.
Besides, probably 90% of the software pirated probably wouldn't have been purchased anyway. And you can't expect a country on the other side of the world with half the population living hand to mouth to recognize your intellectual property rights that have basically been forced on them in the first place.
I'm not trying to say that piracy isn't costing some jobs, but c'mon, stop blaming everything in the world on it. (I'm not sure how they pull the statistics on this kind of thing out of their asses.)
CaptainFabulous
May 20, 2011 at 4:03pm
You wanna know what REALLY is costing US jobs? All the tax breaks that corporations continue to get despite moving nearly their entire workforce overseas. But yeah, no one wants to talk about that.
This report is yet another pound of horse manure by the anti-piracy brigade that refuses to understand that a pirated copy != a lost sale.
Eoraptor
May 19, 2011 at 11:13pm
Okay, let's get something straight, Posters... the ITC is not just talking software here, They're talking games, music, software, clothing, and other technologies, hell, there are entire factories in china which are perfect clones of american and japanese facilities.
I'd say it's not a problem of lax enforcement ont he chinese part, it's a problem of they are making WAY to much money to actually develop their own things when they can steal from the rest of the world. and considering our government is paid very well by both chinese and multi-national interest to specficially not care about jobs and tech heading over there, stolen or otherwise, I don't see it changing.
Joji
May 20, 2011 at 5:44am
China used to be communist, until from recent years, a more democratic government took place which allowed the people to China to finally make their own buisnesses, etc etc.
Now this is fact. For some reason, the Chinese (in China, excluding Hong Kong and probably other countries) thinks that the quickest way to get rich is to use dirty ways such as using cheap, dangerous plastic infused with mercury, mass produce, ???, and profit!! Well, I guess that's what you expect after communism destroyed the higher, middle, and lower classes of China.
I've seen a show where they'd see how poorer people do buisness. They'd plagerize famous paintings, make clones of watches, use paper to make dumplings (70% paper, 30% meat aprox if I remember), put whatever chemicals in frozen foods, and etc. As long as they can the cheap resources to make a clone of another, ethics don't matter.
In fact, getting the resources to create a clone of another product is easy as hell. For watches: 1. Get the clone of the strap from another store specialized in watch straps, 2. Get other manufacturers to make a clone of the casings, 3. Fake the insides! 4. ??? 5. Easy profit for 'em.
CaptainFabulous
May 21, 2011 at 1:48am
But hey, it's the free market at work, right? No pesky goverment regulations to get in the way. If you don't like paper dumplings or lead toothpaste just pick another brand, right? At least that's how Republicants would like our country to work.
ShyLinuxGuy
May 19, 2011 at 9:34pm
I doubt China's piracy issue would affect American jobs significantly, a lot of software development is outsourced to different countries, particularly India. Any major software title has a large amount of outsourced code, either to another company, or the same company producing the software in a different country which is quite often the case.
In other words: blame the lack of software development-related jobs on outsourcing.
Joji
May 19, 2011 at 5:52pm
I blame the US for spending a trillions of dollars on false wars (ie. Vietnam War), weapons, nuclear technology, etc.
I mean seriously, Americans wouldn't have suffered so much from unemployment if the they were to use the money wisely in re-building their economy, free health care, and other important things besides using war as a way to gain power and authority.
Sediket
May 19, 2011 at 6:37pm
Wow, I think your serious, you are the most ignorant person I've ever read or seen on the internet to date. (journel entry for future comparison)
Joji
May 19, 2011 at 8:41pm
Dude, it's been confirmed that the Golf of Tokin Incident was confirmed to be a false flag by the US Government. They falsly claimed that the Vietnam forces attacked their ships so they could gain power and all sorts.
All this info was video/audio taped and there were actual documents that showed evidence that the Vietnam War was a false flag. All thanks to wiki-leaks, we now know that the lives of 54,000 soldiers could have been saved and the millions of civillians were murdered, unfortunately.
They say that the Gulf of Tokin incident ignited the Vietnam War, but through wikileaks, we now learn that the Americans started the war. It's all over the net... go search...
Do you think I'd blame everything on China? No, I blame the US for igniting false wars and wasting trillions of dollars on war as a friggin excuse. Sure China has their problems for piracy, but I believe that US can remain stable if the Government was to USE that money wisely and supply companies most needed of money to survive, or even better yet, unemployed people. Hoewver, we have to make sure the people who are unemployed are the true works and not those who lie just to get the money they need to get another job and to survive.
schmitty6633
May 19, 2011 at 4:47pm
Oh well. The american media is in English anyway so....... they cant really enjoy it at all :D
aarcane
May 19, 2011 at 3:53pm
How is it consting american's money? These chinese people who are pirating wouldn't BUY software instead. They certainly don't call american tech support. the only additional cost to provide a chinese version of most software is localization. If companies choose to localize a product for a market that they know is primarily pirating their software, that's their choice. it costs american companies nothing extra for the chinese to get one copy of the already released software and make a billion copies on their own, and it costs american companies nothing in support. it is literally a situation wherein the only way they CAN lose money is in taking active efforts to try to fight it.
It's the same problem that IP companies in america have fighting poor people and children over piracy. the people in these demographics would not purchase their media or products in lieu of piracy, and piracy incurrs literally $0 in actual damages (one person buys a CD, and takes an ISO copy of it...).
Bullwinkle J Moose
May 19, 2011 at 3:43pm
The Poll results are in
American Companies cost Americans Trillians of dollars and millians of jobs by stealing intellectual property from honest Americans and calling it their own
results compiled by;
Factual Polling Professionals of America
(no relation to Lying Cheating Stealing Pollster Basterdz Inc)
zaphodbeeblebrox 42
May 19, 2011 at 3:26pm
no duh china has been f***ing with americas economy for quite a while but were to nice to really do anyhting about it.
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