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This article is based on Eric Smith recording on November 19, 2009, without the author's review
Q: How do you think about the on-line piracy?
A: China has 600,000,000 cell phone users, 350,000,000 netizens. And it’s very important for China, or maybe not just for China, it’s important for any countries in the whole world to really get to work on protecting contents. Countries like China can gain tremendous from legal services, like building culture industries and building creative industries which will come alive because the viability of high value content. Hundreds of millions of people in China have not a lot of money, so there are tremendous opportunities. But the legal infrastructure didn’t emplace in China and it emplaced in most countries. But China has a particular difficulty just because the number of people and the fact is that there are so many netizens and so many potential users of ISP.
Q: In China, the population is always a big problem.
A: Yes, I mean you stand to gain a lot. A big population and so many people must be able to view content and be able to pay something for the potential economic and culture to the country.
Q: But in the country of small population, the on-line piracy problem is also a big problem.
A: Absolutely, absolutely. No question about it. I mean nobody or no country has controlled this issue yet and we all have to work together. And we all have to listen to each other and be respect to each other and spend much more time together so we can build the infrastructure.
Q: Can you talk about the problem of the UGC? How to balance the profit of the ISP and the right owners?
A: Well, I mean there are a number of mechanisms to deal with the UGC. It is obviously that is an issue. Put your finger prints on contents to have technological methods that prevent the content from being posted in the UGC site. A UGC site is making a lot of money from the pirate content. It’s going to have to start working together with right orders to prevent illegal content coming from the sites.
Q: We all know in US, the red flag clause in DMCA is very important and many countries fallow it including China to protect the copyright of right owners. How do you think about the red flag clause and do we have an advanced method to protect copyright?
A: I don’t think the US has the answer of this law either. We have the notices taken down in net works and the net works in the hosted environment where the website is hosting contents and you can file the notice to the UGC site and they can take down the materials and they will be put back up again. Take them and again, take them and again. So you need new and creative mechanism to cooperate with the web sites including the potential of liability if they don’t use the caution.
Q: Do you have some new commercial method or commercial construction to solve the problem?
A: I think maybe the professors in this conference have some good ideas go beyond the red flags whereas the UGC sites obviously distributing pirate contents.
But I think to a great extant, the technology is also being helpful too. So many countries ordered the websites to begin control contents and a lot of technologies are developing. You don’t have strict competition and you don’t pick winners and pick losers. It’s certainly very important.
And in the P2P file sharing issues, all of our countries have to promote cooperation between ISPs and content owners. Because the graduated response mechanisms which are really not emplaced yet. In any particular countries like French legislation does not implemented yet. I want to this legislation implement like Korea legislation. We don’t have this graduated response mechanisms in US in our legislation so we not doing so great either. There is no good guys and bad guys and we all have a single problem while it’s a world wild problem.
Q：There are many commercial conflicts between US and China especially in the copy right trade area and how do you think about it?
A: It’s a trades issue between our two countries and it’s obviously going to happen. IPR is one of them. You listen to Chinese right holders and they are all very unhappy with the situation in their own country. My clients, my members they are not happy with the situation in China either. So I think that Chinese government has just accepted the fact. The criminal system does not work here. The threshold is too high and to complicated and it’s too difficult to bring a criminal case and they are procedural problem. The copyright law here is really good and it’s modern law but it’s needed provision here and there to bring it to the point where is adequate to deal the particularly on-line piracy. But it’s a very slow time to do like four more years; I think it must be speed up because we don’t have four more years. Every time I ask about this question, the answers are always NO.
The country’s deal with piracy gain economic and countries don’t deal with it, lose. Yes, there is a lot of people they are making money and making living on piracy, but if you want to develop you cannot let that continue. That’s the wrong road. Political leaders in China need to look at the IPR sector as the engine of gross. Once the leader says it is such an important area to the future of China and some these issues sound less controversial and the country can move forward just like we all are on the same road to build the knowledge economy. I think China is very difficult to make an institutional change.
Q: Maybe we just have not found an advanced method to make the law enact.
A: In my country, 95% people don’t know anything about copyright and in your country about 99% people don’t know anything about copyright. It doesn’t matter. It’s up to leadership to make decisions for their people. It’s up to my government to lead the right road to the people and it’s not up everybody to understand the patents, copyright, trademark etc. you need to make people aware it’s wrong to pirate an infringe. One of the ways is to educate the people letting them know that government believes that is wrong. And the way that the government let people know is the really tuff enforcement. There is no better way to educate people except the tuff enforcement.
Q: No education?
A: No, education is very important but one of the elements is education and one of the elements is effective enforcement because that can deliver very strong message to people. For example, in my country there is no article piracy problem although we have many article disk manufactories, but why? Because they don’t want go to the jail.
In 1990s, China close the plans when we which trade dispute with the US and China was exporting all the DVDs, CDs, and CD-ROMs. And the government closed those factories but they were pirating like crazy. But there was not any criminal enforcement against those factories owners. Those factories owners made millions and millions piracy, and did anyone go to the jail? No. Government led it happen. And government can not do that. I mean they can not do it any more. I think the governments are already to move forward for this.
If you have too high rate of piracy, the local creators can not make living. China has to grow 10% a year and you must look all of those elements of your society and maximize your ability to grow.
Years ago, maybe about 1990s, we sat around the table with the Vice-Prime WUYI. She was very clear about this. If China does not go up 10% year, we are in big trouble. And government has to do whatever they can do to make that happen and stopping piracy is one of them and piracy is not a gross industry.
Editor: Xing Bilin
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