At the 'Third Intellectual Property and Urban Development Mayor Forum', November 22, 2010, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) commissioner Tian Lipu refuted allegations that China's high speed rail systems are based on plagiarism. See IP Dragon' article 'Knowledge Transfer in China: How To Train The Dragon To Consume You'.
Sina reports that China News Net was quoting Mr Tian saying:
"How can digesting other people's technology, combined with the adaptation to your own situation so that something new is created be plagiarism?"
An example of such an adaptation was given: China is allegedly the first country where the high speed systems can work in mountains.
Read the translated Sina article here, original here.
In 2007 the Bureau of the Shanghai World Expo 2010 Coordination promulgated a special regulatation (See here: No. 11) concerning intellectual property rights. In short all participants to the World Expo were warned that they should comply to China's IPR laws, regulations and rules far in advance. "The General Administration of Press and Publication and the National Copyright Administration have also called for a rapid-response mechanism to protect the intellectual property rights of the Shanghai World Expo, meaning that copyright departments at all levels will check materials that may infringe on the copyrights of the Shanghai World Expo as soon as they are found." Read more here. That is laudatory indeed, but what about the Shanghai World Expo 2010 organization themselves? Do they also have to comply to the very same IPR laws, regulations and rules?
You probably have seen that 'Haibao', the expo mascot, was an unauthorised copy of an American cartoon figure Gumpy, read the Japan Probe article about it here.
Then the Shanghai Expo theme song 'Right here waiting for you' is an almost completely plagiarized song by Maya Okamoto from 1997 called 'Stay the way you are', listen to the two songs and read Japan Probe's article here. The Shanghai World Expo and organizers first paid 10 million yuan for the plagiarized song and then had to pay 300 million yen to Ms Okamoto to settle the case. According Elaine Kurtenbach who wrote an article about ti for the Associated Press, the Shanghai World Expo organizers said that Ms Okamoto was honored to have a chance to cooperate with the event. Read the AP article here.
Joel Martinsen of the great site about Chinese media, advertising, urban life and many more fascinating subjects, Danwei.org, has a great blog about 'Painted plagiarism of push-up photograph' read here.
I was delighted to receive the learned paper of Charles R. Stone, published in the Marquette Law Review, Vol. 92, p. 199, 2008. It is called 'What Plagiarism Was Not: Some Preliminary Observations on Classical Chinese Attitudes toward what the West Calls Intellectual Property'. It has 32 pages and I read it in just half an hour. And a splendid half hour it was. In this paper Charles makes it plausible that the classical Chinese authors expected their readers to be erudite enough to know what and when they quote and how to interpret these often substantial quotes within the rest of the text. By comparing Chinese classical texts with a legal text that includes references to Supreme Court opinions and quotations, Charles gives his readers (especially the ones with a legal education) the chance to actually experience that the process of interpreting a legal text has in a way many similarities with interpreting a Chinese classical text, which is of course only possible if you have had a classical Mandarin education. Charles explains that in such a cultural environment, heavily influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism where the classical texts were made for the initiated, and communism, a different development of looking at intellectual property was inevitable in China. Gaining power from the dharani
"The reproduction of religious texts is uniquely appealing to Buddhists because it is a tenet of that religion that the copying and distribution of its sutras is a way to receive the blessings of its founder. The Buddha, it is said, once remarked, “Whoever wishes to gain power from the dharani [charms] must write seventy-seven copies and place them in a pagoda.” The underlying “religious motivation is . . . confirmed by the earliest printings of the dharani discovered in Japan and Korea.”"
Fascinating. Thanks Charles. Using the web as a pagoda here is a chanted version of (one of) the most famous dharani the Lotus Sutra.
Peter who is a Yale-China Teaching Fellow teaching English classes at Sun Yat-sen University and runs the China DTR blog, has a nice posting called 'Where's Your Academic Integrity' about widespread plagiarism in his class.
"Plagiarism in our classroom was a surprise because at the beginning of the semester we explained why plagiarism was bad, the consequences of plagiarism such as getting a zero and being kicked out of class, and then had the students sign a contract vowing that they would not plagiarize."
So what happened after this preparation: "And then Some students used Chinese language propaganda pamphlets and just translated them into English and pasted them into their essays. Others lifted whole passages from Wikipedia as their own."
Peter then theorises about possible cultural causes. Read more here.
Danwei publishes Tianya blogger Guerlangwa/Icegrass Bay about an article of his that was published in New Express, Sanqin Metropolis Daily and Heilongjiang's Life Daily, without his authorisation. Read Guerlangwa's article here.
Mu Qian wrote a great article for the China Daily about Chinese songs that are put under increased scrutiny to see if they are original, thanks to the internet.
The Chinese pop scene was a long time isolated from the rest of the world. When Chinese musicians wanted to play, say Western, songs it was sheer impossible for them to pay royalties to the authors. Mu wrote that at that time Chinese pop singers often left the credits of those songs blank. But things have changed.
Chinese music band The Flowers (EMI) is accused of plagiarism. Their popular song Xi Shua Shua (listen to it here) is similar to the hit of Japanese female duo Puffy AmiYumi 2003 (Sony) 'K2G' (listen to it here, scroll down Amazon's page). Pretty similar even to the untrained ear. The songs of The Flowers were written under the credit of Zhang Wei, the band leader.
Netizens have started to put plagiary songs and their originals online for everybody to compare them and the media are fanning the controversy. Media and netizens claim 13 of the 24 songs on the band's last two albums were suspected of plagiarism. 'Fertilizer' for The Flowers include: Canadian singer Avril Lavigne's "I Don't Give";
British trio Busted's "Losing You";
American Singer Hillary Duff's "Party Up";
Belgian group K3's "Heyah Mama";
Irish singer Samantha Mumba's, "Always Come Back To Your Love";
Romanian group O-Zone's "Dragostea Din Tei";
South Korean singer Kim Gun Mo's "Swallow";
Danish group Aqua's "Turn Back Time";
ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell's "Calling".
"At the arrangement of a Hainan-based magazine New Century Weekly, Chen Qi, music director of the International Cultural Exchange Audio and Video Publishing House, analyzed four of the 13 songs and the corresponding "original works.""
Chen found that The Flowers used in their songs almost identical melodies to the international works. According to Chen the imitated parts far exceeded "eight measures," the common standard of judging whether a song is a plagiary. Now I have searched for this so called common standard for music plagiary, to no avail. Do you know anything about it? Please let me know: ipdragon(at)gmail.com. Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project has a great site, see here.
Sony and EMI found a solution to their problem: "EMI revealed this week that it had reached an agreement with Sony, holder of the copyright of Puffy's "K2G," for each company to own 50 per cent of the copyright of "Xi Shua Shua."" But the problems for EMI are far from over now that Jiang Hong, editor of New Century Weekly is contacting overseas media to inform copyright holders of those foreign songs.
