Mr Stan Abrams of China Hearsay has another interesting article. He is criticising yet another public awareness campaign by the Chinese Ministry of Culture (MOC).
Mr Abrams writes: “Advertising, seminars and training courses arranged by MOC will have limited effect. Public education only goes so far.” He suggests that it might be better to hire more cops to enforce IPR. I concur.
Public awareness campaigns, if done in a smart way, (that means something else than “a special day for the destruction of illegal audiovisual products”, which will be on April 26, exactly one month from today, I cannot wait, my o my) could bring down the level of IPR infringements in the long run. But then again it is only logical that IPR enforcement will become better in the long run, because when IPR is becoming more important to Chinese companies if they develop more innovative products, that will be the point when there will be an internal pressure to the Chinese government to enforce IPR more stringently. For this we only have to be patient.
In the mean time the IPR infringements level is much too high, and the PBS (police) and other administrative enforcement authorities, in particular the National Copyright Administration of China which has only 300 (!) persons for the enforcement of copyright in the whole of China, surely need a boost (which is still an understatement).
Read Mr Abram’s article here.
