Pirated movies, Music and books in China do not just mean cheap or free, they mean uncensored, censored and altered, or even the only way to access them. Understanding this is the only way to understand the phrase that went viral on Chinese social media last week: If “everyone” is guilty, then everyone is guilty.
“YYeTs is a well-known Chinese film and TV subtitling group. On February 3, Shanghai police announced the arrest of 14 members of the group and the seizure of its website on suspicion of “infringing on the copyright of a film or television work.
“While there are undoubtedly copyright issues with the free videos shared by Renren, few believe that the Chinese government’s motive for cracking down on it is to protect copyright, but rather to evade and defuse censorship.
On the same day, a screenshot of “What countries offer Netflix?” was widely circulated on Weibo. was widely circulated on Weibo. The image was taken from Netflix’s official website, which explains how to watch the program, with a small line at the bottom saying “Netflix is not yet available in China, Crimea, North Korea, and Syria,” and these countries were also marked in gray on the map.
This is a background explanation for the police crackdown on “Netflix for Everyone” and a silent protest against censorship. In an environment of harsh censorship rarely seen in the world, people are not only grateful for the free access of subtitling groups, including RenRen, but also see them as heroes of the iron curtain of censorship, calling them “Prometheans of the fire.
If we go back in Time to the Cold War, people in the West and in Hong Kong and Taiwan might have a different perspective on the underground distribution of their own works in China than they do today. They knew that there was no way their works could be seen, heard or read by the Chinese unless they went through this route. Thus, it was not a copyright issue in the first place, but a protest movement thirsting for intellectual and informational freedom. Most of those who were pirated would be proud of this.
The so-called reform and opening up did not immediately bring the concept of intellectual property rights and laws to China, but instead set off a wave of “fetishistic” piracy. The opening of the country’s doors made people discover that the West and Hong Kong and Taiwan had not only a rich material Life, but also a colorful and colorful spiritual world. At that time, I was a teenager and a young man. Like most Chinese, I read a lot of Western literature, philosophy and history with a thirst, and had the opportunity to watch some “insider movies”. Looking back now, almost all of them were pirated works.
It was these works that shaped the vibrant 1980s in China. They taught us about freedom and democracy, which led to the nationwide August 9th protest movement. The movement was bloodily suppressed, but provided a mirror for the dramatic changes in Soviet Eastern Europe. Sadly, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Western societies, eager to emerge from the Cold War, turned a blind eye to the Chinese Communist dictatorship, the elephant in the room, or pretended that it would change its ways and finally join the rules of the game in a democracy. This is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party wants. In order to gain international recognition, it has partially played the role of, and overall disguised, a market economy, including the introduction of copyright mechanisms.
Introducing the Chinese model of piracy prohibition
A copyright system can only work in a society governed by the rule of law and a market economy. However, by allowing some works and performers to enter the market and make a lot of money, China has created the illusion for RTHK and the West that any work will have access to the Chinese market through self-censorship. In fact, the Chinese government has never had such a timetable. On the contrary, its plan has always been to develop the “Chinese model” of intellectual production that upholds Communist rule through a model of partial importation, partial piracy, and vast prohibition. For the vast majority of Western and RTHK works, there is no chance of original importation. This is almost no different from the Cold War era.
Many netizens found that the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece, published an article in 2011 that highly praised the Renren Film and Television Subtitling Group, calling it “an intellectual evangelist in the Internet era. As a result, they took to the People’s Daily’s social media to voice their grievances. In fact, the officials are not as insane and inconsistent as people think. Until today, China has been a “People’s Republic of Piracy” in terms of both official policy and private practice. Officials hope to get what they want for free or cheap through piracy, and if they find that it is beyond their control, they may strike at any time. There is a crime for every kind of crime, and there is one for you.
This is not only true for movies and TV works, but the Chinese government plays the same game with the entire Internet industry and all private companies.
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