A week before the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system was to go on sale in China, pirates already had bootlegged copies of it at their shops, for a fraction of the price. This is just another infraction in China's long history of piracy, forgery, and bootlegging. Not only this, but it is just more proof of how hard it is for computer software corporations to sell their merchandise in the country, which just happens to be second largest PC using country in the world. The reason piracy rates are so high is suggested to be price. The software simply isn't affordable, and so consumers find other ways to acquire it. Because of this, software companies have been drastically reducing the prices of their merchandise, but it is still remarkably higher than the price of boot-legged goods.
The Chinese government is also cracking down on the pirating of intellectual property rights, as well as material goods like iPhones and Gucci bags. Recently, 4 people were jailed for selling a boot-legged copy of the Microsoft program, in what is considered the "nation's biggest piracy bust." Pirating is a sore-spot in international trade, and China is trying to take a firmer approach to stopping it, however it is a long term problem that can only be dealt with over time.
Read more here.
Posted by: Jessica Bilstein
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