【中文标题】被忽视的版权
【原文标题】Copyright Neglected
【登载媒体】新闻周刊
【原文作者】Isaac Stone Fish
【原文链接】http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/24/copyright-neglected.html
西方公司并不是知识产权盗窃的唯一受害者，这里讲述了一些中国公司如何学习保护他们自己的底限。
本周，Hillary Clinton 和Timothy Geithner率领一队约200人的书呆子来中国参加第二届战略和经济对话，他们将在一系列从朝鲜鱼雷事件到自主革新法律条款等问题上推动北京的进展。其中一个必然性的话题是北京依然缺乏对版权的保护，尤其是在信息科技领域：在加入WTO十年之后，中国的公司和一些地下组织依然在以惊人的规模盗版产品，还有一些专业黑客改造大部分产品。这种行为被认为每年让美国公司损失250亿美元。微软ECO Steve Ballmer最近说：“我们的生意在中国遇到了大问题，就是盗版满天飞。”
但是西方公司错误地认为他们的代码编写员、作者、设计人员是唯一的受害者，中国的厂家也遭到了盗版者的洗劫。但是与他们的西方同行不同，中国人发明了一些别出心裁的办法来规避这种盗窃文化。他们并不怒发冲冠，也不歇斯底里，而是坦然接受人们会复制他们产品的这个现实，并且想办法来阻止其发生。这是微软应当洗耳恭听的。
视频游戏厂商尤其容易遭到盗版侵害。实际上，主导美国市场的Wii、Playstation和Xbox平台游戏从未在中国真正流行起来，因为被用户仿造和出售的软件只占其市场成本的一小部分。为了避免这种现象，很多中国公司设计的游戏只有在用户连接到中央服务器的时候才可以运行，就像魔兽世界一样。一位北京科技公司企业主和博客作家Bill Bishop说：“如果你控制并管理好服务器，你的游戏内容被盗取的可能性并非没有，但是会小很多。”他预计，这种方式可以把盗版量从可怕的95％降到10％。（毫无疑问，软件盗版商不愿意公开他们的数据。）
依此策略，大部分游戏玩家免费参与游戏，但是提升经验值的一些物品只可以从网络游戏运营商处付费获得。腾讯控股是中国最大的网络游戏运营商（他的市场资本总值比易趣和雅虎还要大），它在自己的网路角色扮演游戏中，成功地让玩家付费获取更好的武器和马匹。研究公司Niko Partners中国的网络游戏市场在2010年将会达到45亿美元，而2009年的数字是35.7亿美元，并且在未来5年中每年的综合增长率为20％。Bishop说，中国的大型游戏公司“在数字媒体的角度来看，已经出色地解决了这个问题”。
如果你没有能力建设一个数字堡垒来保护你的知识产权，那么修建一个真实的堡垒也是个不错的选择。世界上最大的电子设备代工企业富士康在中国大陆雇用了80万名员工。富士康不生产自己品牌的产品，而是将自己的生产能力出租给苹果、英特尔、戴尔和惠普等公司。（例如，今年它将为苹果公司生产大约2400万部4G iPhone。）但是，这么多高科技产品在中国制造，富士康必须保护其产品样品免遭盗窃。在中国，这种损失是工人们每月130美元的工资的指数倍。北京的一位知识产权专业律师Stan Abrams说，因此，富士康建立了“一个军事化的复杂保安系统。他们在厂区内有很多厂房，人们的行动受到严密的监视。”去年，一名工人因为被怀疑盗窃iPhone样机而遭到审问和殴打，之后选择了自杀。今年，有10名工人因不明原因而坠楼。富士康的国际形象或许会因为这些原因不明的死亡事件而遭受损失，但是总体来看，这家公司精密的保安措施让它的客户相信，富士康重视知识产权，并且会竭尽全力来保护它。
至于那些盗窃知识产权的本地公司，他们成功的条件在于生产的东西对中国有益，或者上边有人保护。也就是说，执法者对于他们的越轨行为视而不见。商业书籍《中国拙劣制造》的作者Paul Midler说：“中国依靠降低使用操作软件（比如Windows）的成本，并让很多无力负担其价格的人使用这些软件，获取了巨大的经济利益。”微软每台家用电脑在美国的获得的收入是中国的15倍，盗版猖獗就是原因所在。活生生的数字摆在眼前，出售不那么容易被盗版的产品蕴含着巨大的价值。
原文：
Western companies aren’t the only ones victimized by intellectual property theft. Here’s how Chinese firms have learned to protect their bottom lines.
This week, Hillary Clinton and Timothy Geithner are leading a team of almost 200 wonks to China for the Second Strategic and Economic Dialogue, where they will try to push Beijing on issues ranging from the North Korean torpedo crisis to indigenous innovation laws. An evergreen on this wish list is China’s persistent lack of copyright protection, especially in information technology: almost 10 years after entering the WTO, Chinese companies and underground organizations still pirate goods at an alarming scale, with expert hackers who can reverse-engineer most products. The practice is thought to cost U.S. companies $25 billion per year “We have a particular problem in China in our business, which is that piracy is sky high,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said recently.
But Western companies are wrong to imagine that their code writers, authors, and designers are the only victims. Chinese content providers are also being robbed by pirates. But unlike their Western counterparts, they’ve invented creative strategies to circumvent the culture of theft. Instead of rending their garments and gnashing their teeth, they’ve accepted the reality that people will copy when they can and worked to prevent it. It’s a lesson Microsoft could stand to learn.
Videogame makers have been particularly vulnerable to piracy. In fact, games for Wii, Playstation, or Xbox—which dominate the U.S. market—never really caught on in China because users copied and sold the software at a fraction of its market cost. To avoid such a problem, many Chinese companies designed games that only work when users connect to a centralized server, à la World of Warcraft. “When you’re the gatekeeper and control the server, it’s not impossible, but much more difficult for your content to be stolen,” says Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based tech entrepreneur and blogger who estimates that this approach has reduced the amount of pirating from a whopping 95 percent to 10 percent. (Unsurprisingly, makers of pirated software are coy about releasing data.)
With this strategy, most gamers play for free, but accessories that enhance the experience are available only online from the manufacturer, and only for a price. Tencent Holdings, China’s largest online-gaming operator (it has a market capitalization bigger than eBay and Yahoo) has been particularly successful in getting its gamers to pay for items like better swords and horses for online role-playing games. The research firm Niko Partners has estimated that the online Chinese gaming market will grow to $4.5 billion in 2010 from $3.57 billion in 2009 and have a compounded annual growth rate of more than 20 percent over the next five years. The big Chinese gaming companies, “from a digital media perspective, have pretty much figured it out,” says Bishop.
If you can’t build a digital fortress to protect your property, building a real one may be the next best thing. Foxconn, the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, employs 800,000 people in mainland China. Foxconn doesn’t produce under its own brand name; instead it hires out its manufacturing capabilities to Apple, Intel, Dell, and HP, among others. (This year, for instance, it will produce an estimated 24 million 4G iPhones for Apple.) But with so many high-tech products made in China, Foxconn must guard against prototype theft, which in China could provide a payout exponentially higher than a worker’s monthly $130 salary. For that reason, Foxconn has “a compound of secrecy run like a military operation,” says Stan Abrams, a Beijing-based legal scholar who specializes in intellectual property. “They have so many facilities inside, people coming and going are monitored very strictly.” Last year a worker killed himself after being questioned and allegedly beaten on the suspicion that he stole an iPhone prototype; this year, 10 workers have fallen from buildings for reasons unknown. Foxconn’s international image may have suffered as a result of the unexplained deaths, but overall, the company’s elaborate security measures offer its clients reassurance that Foxconn values intellectual property and will go to great lengths to protect it.
As for the local companies that pirate the technology, they tend to succeed when producing something beneficial to China, or when they have a protector—that is to say, when regulators are willing to overlook their transgressions. “China derives great economic benefit from keeping the cost of operating software [like Windows] low and putting it in the hands of people who normally could not afford it,” says Paul Midler, author of the business book Poorly Made in China. Successful piracy is a major reason why Microsoft’s revenue per personal computer purchase is 15 times greater in the United States than in China. With numbers like that, there’s a clear value to selling products that are less easy to steal. |
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发表于 2010-6-23 18:36
