The challenge of copyright enforcement in china's movie industry

Section II: The large size of China's territory

Secondly, the size of China's territory makes it difficult to fight effectively piracy. The total surface of China is equal to 9.5 million square kilometers, making it the forth-largest country in the world.⁴¹ In 2015, it has a population of 1.4 billion.⁴² Such large number is said to make it nearly impossible to efficiently control the respect of Intellectual Property rights (IPR).⁴³ As a rule, if central authorities promulgate laws, local authorities assure their implementations. However, some provincial authorities get benefit from piracy, be it financially or politically so that they don't even try to enforce the copyright law and simply «turn a blind eye».⁴⁴ This refers to corruption. For example, a local official will not risk loosing his position by enforcing copyrights as ordered by central authorities if the highest official within his administration has an interest in not enforcing this right.⁴⁵ Moreover because of local protectionism, some authorities will prefer to let go a defendant accused of copyright infringement if he is highly contributing to local taxes.⁴⁶ In that sense, Eric Priest considers local protectionism as the biggest challenge for cracking down on piracy.⁴⁷ Also, because of the size of the territory, there are a lot of bureaucratic agencies such as the National Copyright Administration (NCA), which may enforce intellectual property rights. But there is a lack of cooperation among these agencies resulting from rivalries, as there is a competition over the rights to enforcement.⁴⁸ For instance, the infringement of a DVD gives rise to both copyrights and trademarks rights if the logo of the studio company appears on the cover.⁴⁹ In such cases, the lack of cooperation between the NCA and China Trademark Office may present an obstacle to the national spread of the rule of law in China.

⁴¹ www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/countries_by_area.htm (visited on the 5/11/2015).

⁴² www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/ (visited on the 5/11/2015).

⁴³ Cheung Gordon, see above note 28, p.21.

⁴⁴ Massey Joseph "The Emperor Is Far Away: China's Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Protection, 1986-2006," Chicago Journal of International Law: Vol. 7: No. 1, 2006, Article 10, p.233.

⁴⁵ Priest Priest, see above note 26, p.823.

⁴⁶ Kariyawasam Rohan, Chinese Intellectual Property and Technological Law, «Copyright protection in China» by Li Yufeng, Edward Elgar, 2011, p.98.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p.822.

⁴⁸ Priest Eric, see above note 26, p.824.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

9

Section III: The economic difficulty

Thirdly, an economic argument is often evoked to explain difficulties met during the fight against piracy. Some towns are economically growing only thanks to piracy.⁵⁰ By violating intellectual property rights, Chinese citizens can obtain products at a lower price so that they can not only get access to knowledge and technology, but also consume culture products cheaply.⁵¹ In that sense, paying more to access to a copyrighted work in accordance to the law is not really attractive: pirating is less expensive for the consumer. In 2014, the salary of an average worker was about seven hundred dollars per month.⁵²In this situation, paying one dollar for a pirated DVD will be more appealing than paying ten to fifteen for a legitimate one.⁵³ However, this argument can be counter-balanced as it will be shown in the second part of this research paper.