Word: dvds
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...need to finish the sentence. And then ... nothing. China is always promising to crack down on intellectual-property abuse. In fact, the government recently declared March 15 to be Antipiracy Day, and there are still big billboards downtown urging everyone to combat the scourge of illegally copied software, DVDs and other products. Not surprisingly, Chinese officials threw a rhetorical fit on hearing of the WTO complaint, brought by U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab on behalf of the American music and film industries. Commerce Ministry spokesman Wang Xinpei said it would "seriously undermine the cooperative relations the two nations have established...
...have made some progress. That's why companies like Microsoft and Merck want no part of the WTO complaint. But for the film and music business, the claim that there has been headway is simply a joke. "Competition has never been tougher," Li Haihua tells me as he peddles DVDs of new Hollywood films for 60? apiece on Shanghai's Huaihai Street, just blocks from a big antipiracy billboard. "There are more [sellers] than ever before, and the price has come down." Zhou says he earns less than 13? per disc. "It's definitely a volume business," he adds wearily...
...communication studies at Northeastern University. Inside access to products and the feeling that companies care about what you and your friends think are such strong motivating forces that other forms of compensation pale in comparison. BzzAgent's members earn reward points, which they can cash in for prizes like DVDs and books--yet 87% of them never...
...guys on the retail end of the business don't like this at all. As more and more people have piled into the business, their margins have come down. After paying his "middleman" for a new supply of DVDs about once every two weeks - he has about 1000 titles for sale at any one time - Zhou says he earns less than one RMB per disc sold. "It's definitely a volume business," he says wearily. When I press him on where his middleman gets his product - that is, who's actually making these pirated DVDs - Zhou smiles and plays dumb...
...Granted, quality is sometimes an issue (though the pirated 24 disc was perfect.) A lot of the DVDs available are so-called "coat movies," the kind of low-rent pirating famously (and hilariously) depicted in an episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer agrees to smuggle a hand-held camera into a theater in order to illegally tape a movie. In a coat movie you can literally hear people coughing and half the time someone will stand up right in front of the camera. And sometimes language is an issue. I had to buy three copies of Casino Royale until...