Black DVD market gets new black eyes
Li Li

While cultural shock is common among first-time overseas travelers, Ji Bing, a 27-year-old client manager in a bank, still thinks he got a particularly electrifying one on a recent European package tour. The young man, who saved half a year for this trip, was baffled when he was admired as a very rich man at a DVD rental store in a Munich suburb during an after-dinner walk.
“To practice my English, I told the clerk in the store who is in his 40s that I have a private collection of over 1,000 such DVDs,” recalled Ji, a huge fan of Hollywood movies. “Hearing that, the clerk said I was literally rich especially considering my age.” Ji still doesn’t get the logic of the clerk, who later told him he didn’t own all rental DVDs in his store. Ji cannot see his DVD collection as a fortune. “Every disc costs me 6 or 7 yuan, which all add up to around 7,000 yuan, which is around my monthly wage and less than half of the clerk’s own wage. Then how can he call me a rich man?” said a confused Ji.
The best explanation for Ji’s bewilderment is that all his DVDs are counterfeits, which are so readily available in China. In fact, in most cases of new theatrical releases it’s the only version available. But as foreign studios begin serious efforts to market legitimate DVDs in China, Ji will soon face a choice between buying a cheap counterfeit and a slightly more expensive legal copy of higher quality. Ji’s choice, together with tens of millions of home video lovers in the country, will finally decide the success or failure of Hollywood movie studios’ new round of efforts to battle piracy through nurturing a market for genuine copies. A business solution
As China’s trade surplus with the United States has repeatedly broken records in recent months, it is no wonder a protectionist tone found a way into the rhetoric of visiting U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. “Another victim of widespread intellectual property theft in China is American support for expanding our trade relations,” said the visiting secretary. However, the highlight of the U.S. secretary’s visit, the signing of an exclusive agreement between Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and China’s largest video distributor, Zoke Cultural Group, on November 13, offset the subtle hint of protectionism by sending a positive message. Marking a milestone for the studio, Fox has launched an in-country business with Zoke as its exclusive partner to supply the Chinese market with legitimate copies of recent theatrical releases and celebrated titles from the studio’s library. With Fox’s commitment to releasing the titles more quickly on DVD, Zoke has started its first wave of DVD and VCD titles in November, led by blockbuster Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (out November 20), Ice Age: The Meltdown (December 1) and X-Men: The Last Stand (by the end of this year). Fox announced at the signing ceremony that at least 100 movies on DVD will be exported to China in 2007.
“The distribution agreement between Fox and Zoke is an important symbol of the stake both China and the United States have in seeing intellectual property rights vigorously enforced in China,” said the visiting commerce secretary. At the signing ceremony, Fox Home Entertainment Worldwide President Mike Dunn pointed out two reasons for choosing Zoke. The first is its distribution capacity: Zoke has a distribution network of over 20,000 retail outlets throughout China. The other is its solid reputation in fighting intellectual property right infringements. According to Wang Yu, Public Relations Manager of Zoke, the company was the first audio and video publisher in China to set up an anti-piracy department, in 1999, which has expanded to a team of over 100 people or about one seventh of the company’s total staff. The company has set up permanent supervision offices in 15 cities across China, which closely monitor the market and help with local government agencies’ crackdown on piracy through reporting the production or sale of counterfeits, raiding warehouses and bringing to court those involved in IPR infringements.
In an interview with Xinhua, Guo Zilong, President of Zoke, said his company promised to respond to every privacy complaint from its wholesale clients. He said his company has the ability to cooperate with governments at different levels to eradicate piracy against Zoke products at stake; if Zoke failed to do so within a certain period, Zoke promises to recall their copies from wholesalers on request. In October alone, Zoke cooperated in 20 raids with the government, which confiscated over 250,000 pirated copies. Huang Zhenbin, the director of the company’s anti-privacy department, told Beijing Review that after the debut of every big-budget movie that sells its copyright for publishing video products to Zoke, the president and vice presidents will meticulously travel to cities with the most rampant piracy to lobby local governments to take action against the targeted piracy so as to protect Zoke’s profits and the profits of its partner. Huang said such a reputation helped Zoke win the favor of Fox. “Counterfeit manufacturers just don’t dare to copy DVDs of Zoke since they know we could come after them,” said Huang. Fox not the precedent
Yet Fox is not the first top Hollywood studio to promote affordable authentic DVDs in China. Warner Home Video has been trying a similar approach by forming a joint venture with the Shanghai-based Chinese Audio and Video Publishing House last February. According to both Warner and Fox, the winning chips in the Chinese market are world-class quality, reduced pricing, Mandarin dubbing, subtitles and shortened release windows. Deng Jianguo is the Zoke manager in charge of the cooperation project with Fox. He explained that the cooperation between the two companies is strategic and profound, which will cover all procedures of production, marketing and IPR protection. “If we need enhanced content on DVD for the purpose of sales promotion-say a DVD extra of Garfield in China-Fox probably will listen to our advice and make it for us,” said Deng. However, Deng singled out the shortening of release timeframes and synchronized worldwide DVD publication as the key to winning the battle with pirated DVDs in China. In China, the most rigorous competition for authentic DVDs of foreign movies is the replicated copy of the legitimate DVDs published in other countries a bit earlier, which is of considerably good quality. Deng said the rule in the home entertainment publication industry is that first round publication rakes in profits and second round reaps practically nothing. “We have told our Fox partners that they can only choose between synchronized publication of DVD in China and minimal sales,” said Deng. He told Beijing Review that Fox has agreed in principle to publish DVDs in China the same time as other countries, which is about three months after the theatrical debut.
In experimental cases, Warner is exploring a new model of letting the Chinese market take the lead. Warner’s joint venture in China last June released the The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on DVD in China only two days after the theatrical release in the United States. In September, the Superman Returns DVD, competitively priced at 14 yuan and 22 yuan for two versions, was released in China two months earlier than its worldwide bow elsewhere. The success was phenomenal as the authentic DVDs were sold in more than 8,000 retail outlets, many of which had previously stocked only counterfeit movies, according to a company release. Mike Ellis is Senior Vice President and Regional Director of Asia-Pacific for the American Motion Picture Association (MPA), the lobby group for Hollywood and the global interests of the U.S. movie industry. He told Beijing Review that the prices of legitimate home video products are extremely competitive in China and Chinese people can afford it. “When I see Chinese people paying $3 for a Starbucks cappuccino, I know we can convince them that legitimate versions of movies are worth paying for,” said Ellis. Difficult mission
Meanwhile, a nationwide campaign of intensive crackdown on piracy, which was unprecedented in terms of its duration and number of government departments involved, started July 15 and lasted 100 days. Jointly launched by 10 ministries and national departments, the campaign revoked 368 business licenses for audiovisual products. Nearly 13 million pirated CDs, DVDs and computer software items confiscated in the first half of the 100-day campaign were destroyed in different cities on September 16. Meeting with his American counterpart, Chinese Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai said the Chinese Government regards IPR protection as a national strategy. “We will show no mercy in the fight against IPR infringement,” said Bo.
The Chinese Government also is trying to relieve the situation by nurturing the retailing channels for legitimate DVDs. New rules were released in November to make entering the audio and video chain business in China easier, with the minimum registration fee reduced from 5 million yuan to 1 million yuan. In a Xinhua report, a spokesman from the Ministry of Culture said the market for audio-video chain stores is “shrinking” because their high operating costs render them at a disadvantage in competing with street vendors hawking pirated discs.
A study undertaken by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on behalf of the MPA, released this July, paints an even starker reality. In the first survey examining the impact of piracy from the perspective of industry insiders, 61 percent of the 100 respondents believe movie piracy will continue to increase in the short term. The same report concludes, “Pirated movies have fundamentally undermined the production capacities of China’s movie industry, with the private sector hit most severely.” Another study commissioned by the MPA and conducted by independent research firm LEK Consulting found that piracy cost the movie industry in China $2.7 billion of potential revenue in 2005, of which just $244 million was lost for MPA member companies and most of the rest lost by the Chinese industry itself. “The Chinese industry is affected far more than MPA member companies,” said Ellis from the MPA. “At the moment it is virtually impossible for Chinese filmmakers to make money domestically from the productions; they must hope to sell overseas distribution rights and as a result make money in markets where piracy is less widespread.”
Zoke’s Deng said the whole video publication industry has been in a sluggish mood since last year due to the introduction of the devastating piracy technology of compact discs. Every compact disc, available at 7 yuan, can easily store 80 hours of content, which equals 40 movies or 30 episodes of the latest TV soaps. Deng also said Zoke’s anti-privacy tasks are anything but easy. He said now it has to deal with the wider availability of fake DVDs, spread by outdoor vendors squatting on stacks of the latest releases in popular areas like pedestrian bridges and outdoor vegetable markets. On the other hand, Deng said whereas most local governments vigorously support and engage in Zoke’s anti-piracy efforts, some try to shelter piracy as local tax revenues are collected from companies involved in illegal production. “This year we have intensified efforts to hire lawyers and launch judicial action against piracy for economic compensation, and it works well,” said Zoke’s Huang. “The situation is at least turning around in key markets-big cities like Beijing and Shanghai”.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)


Iranian nuclear crisis
Col ® M Zaman Malik

In 1976, when Kissinger was secretary of state for President Gerald Ford, he held that “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for growing needs of Iranian’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petro-chemicals.” Before 1976, when the Shah was in power, Washington strongly supported these programmes. Today, the standard claim is that Iran has no need for nuclear power, and therefore must be pursuing a secret weapons programme. “For a major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources.” When asked by Dafana Linzer of Washington post about this somersault, Kissinger responded with usual frankness, “They were an allied country.” Yet Shah, the most allied ally, was toppled with the connivance of America in 1979. Who is and who is not an allied country, what are US parameters for an allied or a non-allied country, and how can an allied be sure of not being an allied, next moment? The Administration succeeding the Shah was supposed to be very much despondent needing US care all the time! But that was not to be and the US had to regret hard particularly, after the dismal failure of the operation “Desert Storm”. And since then, it has remained preoccupied with the task of eliminating all the present governments coming after the Shah.
Didn’t Ford administration, in 1976, endorse Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium - the two pathways to a nuclear bomb?” All the top planners of Bush – 2’s administration, who are now denouncing these programmes, were then in key national security posts: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. What has caused the volte-face to US outlook now? It is nothing but the US designs which have turned around completely. Then the US was just out of the Cold War. It had to go a bit gradually. It was what it had learnt from the “Desert Storm.” Then the US took us to Iraq, which was inveigled into the trap that endorsed the US, all out support for occupying Kuwait. Saddam was mighty happy, because, otherwise, Iran that had claimed it to be its own integral part was quite capable of occupying it, any time. This was the picture that was painted to Iraqi President Saddam Hussain, who must have felt this ‘spin’ as a real imminent threat. Hence he did what he did. Now, having gained control over the Mid-East, it needs not care for oil from others; the oil is its own and it (US) is the owner of oil. That’s the reason the restrictions have been imposed on Iran – the same Iran that once upon a time, in 1976, needed top priority response for Enriched Uranium as well as Plutonium, from US!
In May 2003, according to Flynt Leverret, then a senior official in Bush’s national Security Council, the Government of Muhammad Khatami in Iran proposed “ an agenda for a diplomatic process that was intended to resolve on a comprehensive basis all of the bilateral differences between US and Iran.” The proposal included, “ weapons of mass destruction, a two – state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the future of Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization and cooperation with the UN nuclear safeguards agency;” the Financial Times had also reported the matter, in addition to of course, the Swiss diplomat who was reprimanded by the Bush administration, for conveying the offer. Now, every conceivable effort seems to have been cast down – no hope, for the dwarf to draw US attention, except accepting the US terms. The Muslims, for their resources, must surrender their resources or suffer the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the hands of US itself or its forward post – Israel.
There were ways to call to mitigate and probably end these crises. The first was to call off the very credible US-Israeli threats that virtually urged Iran to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent. And after that the US should have accepted a verifiable Fission treaty, as well as El Baradei’s proposal, or something similar. Then, in the Third step the US should have demanded the implementation of article six of the NPT, which obligates the nuclear states, a binding legal obligation, as the World Court determined. The US should have first ensured that all of the nuclear states had lived unto that obligation. Even now it is not too late, considering the hell the US hallucination is going to let loose.
The countries of SAARC, CARs, and OIC, must shun their mutual defences; the enemy is trying hard, with some success too, to ‘divide and rule.’ Just imagine, what was the US upto, from late 1979 to 1987, what was it engrossed into, from 1995 to Until it got hold of the hand - picked for Afghanistan, what was it busy into from 1979, after the Shah of Iran, for eight years, how did it wangle Saddam Hussain for the occupation of Kuwait, what happened to Iraq in 1993, what happened to Palestine after ‘Osolo’ episode, and then what happened to Saddam Hussain without having ICBMs? What happened to Afghanistan after 9/11 in the same way as it had happened to Iraq, and how is the Iranian government being threatened with sanctions which have already been imposed on it? The Countries in the West of India and Pakistan, the Subcontinent itself, Asian, and the Central Asian States should not allow themselves to be reduced piecemeals. Why did Indian Armed forces remain entrenched on the International Borders of both India and Pakistan for a year, and to please who? The time is not far when we shall be regretting over our miscalculations and false hopes that some of us have attached with Zionism - driven America – America of the Pre-emptive. Nevertheless, we shall always remain prudently pragmatic and for that purpose, we need to try hard for Multilateralism in the shortest possible time we might possibly be having available for ourselves.

Mentally depressed and trigger happy Indian soldiers
Fatima Syed

The Indian Army Chief has admitted that nearly 100 Indian army soldiers commit suicide every year, most of them under stress from fighting insurgents in Kashmir and the remote North East. Suicides and killing fellow soldiers have become perilously frequent in the Indian Armed Forces. This phenomena is appearing with frightening regularity. Since 2002, there have been at least 200 incidents of violence within the armed forces and at least 100 soldiers commit suicide every year. Till October 81, suicides have been reported as compared to 77 last year, 100 in 2004 and 96 in 2003, an average of 88.5 over the past four years. Four hundred army personnel have killed themselves in Jammu and Kashmir in the past four years, while 100 of them pointed the muzzles towards their fellow soldiers, before ending their own lives.
The phenomena of suicides and colleague killing is a result of amalgamation of different factors. The principle facilitators of fratricide and suicide are easy availability of firearms and an inflexible leave system. In many cases, the incidents of suicide and colleague killing happened when Jawans wanted to go on leave and were denied that previlege or were just returning from leave. In the first case, the necessary relief after a stressful stint is missing. In the second case, the problems at home, which remain unattended due to long periods of absence, could be the cause. So, in such a stressful state of mind a normal rebuke, scolding or an embarrassment is enough to ignite them.
The rapport between Officers and Junior Commissioned Officers is missing. Officers at senior level are more concerned with their own welfare rather then the welfare of Jawans. Similarly, Jawans in Indian Army also face economic pressures. They are deprived of adequate housing and decent salaries. They face poor promotional avenues and poor pensions. Due to economic pressures Armed Forces personnel seek premature discharge from the services. But the Indian government is reluctant to relieve them . These army men when trapped in insurgency hit areas and finding no way out suffers from mental stress, which eventually drained out anger and violence against fellows and others.
The hostile working conditions in insurgent infested areas are no less important. The jawans, trained to fight a visible enemy, have to fight an invisible enemy in insurgency ridden areas and are exposed to enemy by themselves. So this confusion increases mental stress and frustration that results into rash actions. Soldiers in counter insurgency operations of the North and North East carry loaded rifles with them all the time. The smallest arguments usually result in the safty catch being slipped off and triggers being pulled.
Stress, low morale and denial of leave are the main reasons for suicdes and fellow killing. The Indian army is well aware of growing problem of suicides and colleague killing. It is increasing the number of psychiatrists in community hospitals. It also intended to introduce yoga exercises at the unit level.