BACK FROM SHANGHAI and finally (almost) done with Chinese class. I start a 32h/week internship with the Dept. of Commerce tomorrow, in a division called the US Export Commission. Basically, I’ll be helping US businesses do work in China (and attract Chinese to their products, of course). First assignment: Las Vegas. From what I gather, LV is trying to do work with the conventions that always held across China. Should be not too bad. At the very least, it will be a welcome respite from nonstop Chinese class.
Last week, we were down in Shanghai for a business seminar (and for some sightseeing, of course). Shanghai (and the surrounding cities like Hangzhou, Ningbo, Wuxi) is a massive, quite modern city. The city is one hundred percent unlike the Shanghai of 1990. There is an entire area of town, Pudong (the picture to the right with the skyscrapers is of Pudong), that was literally rice paddies fifteen years ago. Pretty cool to see how fast development rolls on. Shanghai has a large expat population, too, so it’s much easier for Westerners to live a Western lifestyle there than it is in Beijing. My uncle was also in town, so I headed out with him to Hangzhou as a sniper translator. I learned that translating yourself is actually quite important. Our company’s translators were near fluent in English and Chinese, but the tone of their translation was often nowhere near what the English tone was. It was fun sneaking into this meeting pretending not to know any Chinese, too; I rocked a gold tie with pandas on it for the full “Just arrived from Los Angeles and don’t know a thing” look.
Unfortunately, I suffered my first hit of Montezuma’s Revenge (also known as “Delhi Belly”, “Traveller’s Plague”, and many others) when I was in Shanghai after I ate something bad. I had a great streak of 7 or 8 years without throwing up going - what can ya do? I ended up getting quite sick and flying back to Beijing so I could see a Western doctor. Have you ever had disortientation? It feels like everything gets twice as loud and everything (yourself included) is moving twice as fast as normal. Really, really wierd. I’m good to go now, but I still have to deal with the insurance company, which might be even worse.
So I’m hoping to write a book about copyright sometime in the next couple years, and a topic I’ve been thinking about (that’s been discussed very little) is how a poor choice of words by lawmakers and the nature of a computer means that our ability to use IP we’ve purchased legally is massively limited. Consider this: In the eyes of the law, any time a file is sent across the internet, a “copy” is made. Now let’s assume you wanted to establish an internet video rental store. In the offline world, you would buy one copy of a video, then (without needing permission of the copyright holder) you could rent it to as many people as you desired, of course with the proviso that only one person is watching the copy at a time (since only one person can have the physical video/DVD). So you establish a paralell online store: You buy DVDs, convert them to a digital file on your computer (perfectly legal personal use), then charge $1/DVD/rental to “stream” the movie to a customer over the internet. You use a special system, however, that ensures that only X “streams” of a given movie are able to streamed at once, where X is the number of legal copies of a DVD that you’ve bought. That is, if you buy 10 DVDs of “Star Wars” legally, you will set your system up so that only 10 people can pay to stream that movie simultaneously. Two hours later, the rental ends, and the digital file is “returned” to your digital “store” where you can rent it out again. You may even consider adding the ability to sell the movies permanently, deleting the digital file from your server (or making X equal to X-1) and sending the DVD to your customer. In every way, this is an exact parallel of Blockbuster, only using digital technology to improve efficiency and reach more customers. Unless you consider Blockbuster a company that trades on IP theft in the real world, you shouldn’t think this new company is “stealing” IP or doing anything illegal.
Nonetheless, because those streams are technically “copies” (solely because of how computers work), this new company is almost certainly illegal. The result? Blockbuster’s rental market forced the cost of new VHS movies from $60 down to under $20 in the early 1980s by providing some competition with direct VHS sales. This new system will help keep costs down for digital goods in the same way. Since the beginning of copyright, we’d had a de facto or de jure “right of second sale” which means that once the consumer buys the book/music/DVD, he can do with it what he wishes, including resell or rent it. We’re losing that right.
It gets worse, though. Let’s say Congress says that above digital system is legal. What happens when the first movie is released without a DVD - that is, only as a digital copy. It will surely have some type of DRM wrapper - the annoying copyright “limitations” that come with iTunes music are an example. It’s a felony to hack copyright encryption under the DCMA in the United States. That is, there would be no way to “convert” the DRM wrapped file to a streamable file.
This example is a not a special situation - the current IP regime has far, far worse effects both on creativity and economic efficiency in the IP markets. The special interests are kicking the ass of the biggest special interest of all - the people. And no one cares, because the record and movie industries have convinced a ton of people that any use of IP not authorized by some content company is immoral and should be illegal. We’re on a very slippery slope.
Incidentally, I’m reminded of another thought I had: Why isn’t “Law” a requirement for students (at the college or HS level)? I don’t mean a “let’s train to be lawyers” type of course, but a basic “these are the rights of Americans, this is what happens when you’re arrested, this is what you can do if sued, this is how you stand up for yourself” kind of course. Is this not more valuable than “European History” for the average American (mind you, I think both are valuable)?
If I were running a University, I would require 6 courses of every student: “History of Western Thought”, “History of non-Western Thought”, “Law for Everybody”, “The Political System”, “Economics for Everybody”, and “Science for non-Scientists”. The last four classes would be taught expressly for people not studying those subjects. People studying Biology don’t need to know the formula for Okun’s Law in Economics, but it would be good if they understood that inflation and unemployment often are a tradeoff. Economists don’t need to know Faraday’s Equations, but understanding how the universe works is interesting no matter what career you’re in. At most colleges, these classes are not only not requirements, they’re not even offered! I don’t understand it. If I go to Econ grad school and become a professor, I will teach the Econ for Everybody, no questions.
Hey, last up, have you seen the anti-Japanese protests going on here in China? There have been sizable anti-Japanese protests over the last week, and the Japanese embassy was damaged by rock-throwers. The Chinese government calls these spontaneous demonstrations against Japan joining the UN Security Council and against a new Japanese textbook which (perhaps truly) whitewashes Japan’s atrocities during WW2. Here’s what the articles don’t tell you: 1) A number of college kids had class cancelled on the day of the protests here in Beijing. 2) There were no arrests at all at these “illegal” demonstrations (i.e., they were government sanctioned). 3) There is massive, massive anti-Japanese racism in China. I know a number of Chinese kids who don’t like talking to our Japanese (really Japanese-American classmates), and even more who refuse to buy Japanese goods. There are often anti-Japanese T-shirts for sale on the street. It’s not even a “We don’t like their policies, but Japanese people are great” situation - many Chinese don’t like Japanese people, period. Btw, the Chinese kids I’m talking about are all highly educated and urban, so you can guess what the attitudes toward the Japanese are in the rural areas or among older people.
OK guys, peace. If anyone knows of any jobs in the Eugene area this summer, hit me up.
