China threatens rival spec to dodge DVD royalties

[bonkers325]

"...Under public pressure to pay what they consider excessive royalties on DVD products, manufacturers in China are threatening to roll out their own specification for DVD-like disks and players for the Chinese market. The spec for China's so-called Advanced Video Disk (AVD) technology, which foreign companies would be required to license for products they sell in China, could be published this year if DVD royalty issues are not settled. But industry sources outside mainland China said AVD may be a ploy to gain leverage in negotiations over DVD royalties.

Chinese manufacturers raised the topic of the new AVD standard after members of the DVD Forum said at the 2001 International Consumer Electronics Show earlier this week that they are stepping up efforts to get DVD system manufacturers to pay intellectual-property royalties, which can amount to as much as 10 percent of DVD hardware's total cost.

"The unilateral high royalties will be very harmful for the global industry and customers. It sets up a terrible barrier to further negotiation and cooperation," said Jin Zhenglong, secretary general of China Audio Industry Association (CAIA), which represents about 90 DVD and video CD player manufacturers in China. "It probably will drive Chinese manufacturers to give up on the DVD format. It also means foreign companies [will] need to pay high royalties for adoption of China's homegrown format in this growing market."

But Lu Shuh-tai, director of the Optical Electronics and Systems Laboratory in Taiwan, said he believes the Chinese government "wants to negotiate with the DVD Forum to see if it can get greater benefits from the royalties." The proposed AVD spec could be used "as leverage," Lu said..."

Link

 

[MissingLinc]

I have heard that China is the source of the worst media piracy in the world; not a favorite of the Western software, music, and movie industry. If I were getting ripped off by someone I would want to see them put under the vice too.

 

[UG]

Communist China's principle talent is thievery, followed closely by dishonesty.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

I thought the SVCD was supposed to combat the DVD? I haven't heard about this AVD...hopefully it will be on standard cds.

 

[saxman]

<< Communist China's principle talent is thievery, followed closely by dishonesty. >>



sadly, that is very true.

 

[UG]

Having traveled much of Eastern and central China over the years, the people of China are fine, very nice people, except for the group of six that scammed me out of about US$50, and the commies that think killing folks is preferable to Democratic self-determination.

 

[Passions]

<< Communist China's principle talent is thievery, followed closely by dishonesty. >>

You take that back right now! Take that back!

 

[ManSnake]

UG:

You want democratic self-determination?? How about Philippine? How about India? Compare those two democratic nations to the Communist Red China, which nation is more prosperous? Which nation is more powerful?

 

[prontospyder]

Mansnake:

How about Communist China compared to democratic Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, or South Korea...who's more prosperous and who has citizens that are not afraid of being dragged out in the middle of the night and beaten to death because of their ideas?

 

[UG]

ManSnake,

<... which nation is more prosperous? Which nation is more powerful?..>

Easy. The US of A.

China is a country with a very expansive history -- architecture, art, medicine, cultural identity. However, it's modern achievements are a mere shadow of its former self. That's why it must steal from other nations to be able to pretend to be competative politically, economically, and culturally with the West.

Seen the recent photos of the second Chinese soon-to-be man-rated spacecraft? They had to buy it from the Russians because they couldn't engineer it themselves from the ground up.

The biggest wall the modern Chinese Communists can manage to build is a dam that only spans a couple miles across the Yangzte river. To their credit, this time they're paying people to build it.

 

[ManSnake]

The US is imposing laws that prohibit the sale of high tech products to China. Among these are the supercomputers. However, it has not prevented the Chinese from inventing high tech products of their own. It has been reported that Shanghai University has invented a supercomputer that is able to perform some 450 gigaflops (one gigaflops is one billion floating point operations per second). The best Japanese and American supercomputers can now perform in the teraflops range (one teraflops is one trillion floating points operations per second). In 1995 the Japanese first broke the teraflops mark with the GRAPE-4 (GRAvity PipE number 4) which consisted of 1692 interconnected processors. In 1997 Intel Corp. made a teraflops supercomputer called Janus which consisted of 9072 interconnected processors. Janus is used by the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

So while the 450 gigaflops Chinese machine is not as powerful as the state of the art machines in Japan and the US, yet it does prove that the Chinese are making very fast progress. Given the progress made, it is not unreasonable to expect the Chinese to be able to make supercomputers that are as good as any in the world soon. Perhaps within the next couple of years.

So as much as the US is trying to strangle Chinese technological advancement by prohibiting the export of high tech products to China, yet in the end it only encourages the Chinese to develop their own high tech products.

 

[prontospyder]

IBM built the world's fastest supercomputer rated at 12.3 teraflops...it's gonna be used by the US Government for nuclear testing...

I'm just glad IBM ain't selling it to communist China....sorry, I don't believe in giving that much power to a totalitarian government.

 

[ManSnake]

How about Communist China compared to democratic Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, or South Korea...who's more prosperous and who has citizens that are not afraid of being dragged out in the middle of the night and beaten to death because of their ideas?

First of all, Taiwan is Republic of China! Secondly, tell me how is Taiwan's current economic situation? Ever since Chen Shui-bian was elected the president of the Republic of China, Taiwan's stock market has continuely gone south, why? Because Taiwan's economy depend on its relationship with mainland China! Since Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party is pro-independence, people of Taiwan are losing faith in the new government, add to that the termination of the building of a new nuke plant, people are now seeing that the new government knows nothing about economics. No wonder that the experts on Wall Street are starting to say that Taiwan is now one of the worst places in Eastern Asia for investors to invest.

As for Singapore, Japan, South Korea and etc, those countries have an island economy structure, which means their primary source of income is to export lots and lots of goods while mainland China has a continental economy structure, it has enough land and natural resources to support itself. For island economy to thrive, they need the support of the continetal economy, without it, they are doomed! So only US and EU can be compared to mainland China!

Any clear-minded person would chose mainland China to invest their money in whether commie or not, cuz money speaks louder than anything else, sad, but that is the undeniable truth!

 

[UG]

The West is merely slowing the rate at which the Chinese Communists use modern technology to kill their own citizens and potentially anyone else on the planet.

Most Chinese are not Communists, otherwise the Commies wouldn't need to kill so many to keep the rest 'in their place'.

The West very much wants the Chinese people to become affluent and contributively productive for the benefit of all. The West has no interest or reason to contribute to the Communists' subjugation of the Chinese people by supplying the Communists with the technology to better violate the human rights of the citizens currently in their charge. Nor the human rights of the West itself.

If the US didn't recognize the value of raising the productivity and living standards of non-Americans, we wouldn't have helped the Japanese after World War II, nor the Germans, the Italians, the Russians, the French, the Spanish, or anyone else that has ever raised a weapon against us in the past. We could just nuke everyone and claim what's leftover for ourselves.

 

[ManSnake]

UG

You think too highly of our country! Do you really think that the US wants to fight for the rights of world's people? Be real, US only do things in its best interest, in other words, to make lots and lots of money by containing (threatening) other countries! That is why we helped in rebuilding Japan, Germany, so we can make money in Western Europe and East and Southeast Asia and in the same time contain USSR, PRC, etc!

 

[UG]

<...Do you really think that the US wants to fight for the rights of world's people?..>

Yes, even though you aren't similarly interested.

<... US only do things in its best interest,..>

And fighting for the rights of the world's people is not ultimately in the best economic interest of the US?

<... to make lots and lots of money by containing (threatening) other countries!..>

No, it makes lots of money helping to develope the skills and economic abilities of others. The US saves money, for itself, and most everyone else, by containing threatening countries and their ability to foment economic mayhem.

 

[KarsinTheHutt]

Dodging royalties? No problem. The US can unleashe the most deadly weapon available in the Intellectual Property world....


THE LAWYERS OF RAMBUS INK!

 

[The Wildcard]

Haha the Chinese goverment in China does little, if anything, to crack down on piracy.

They absolutley see no reason whatsoever to do so since the majority of the movies and software that is being pirated are not developed from their country.

 

[atsang]

these kinds of things make me ashamed to be chinese...

 

[ElFenix]

that and the official line of the chicomms is that information is free. unless it is anti commie in some manner.

the US wants china to be affluent so that we can sell products to them. thats it. we're wanted to sell to the chinese forever. we rebuilt western europe to, officially, contain the commies, and also made a chunk of change on the side. and when did we help the russians and spanish? it would be more efficient if we just deposited the aid to russia directly into the oligarch's bank accounts. and we helped franco in the second spanish civil war.