 While China warns the US about WTO piracy complaints, a $1 dollar bootleg of Spiderman 3 hits the streets of Beijing two weeks before it debuts in the US.
As if the US wasn't already angry enough over widespread piracy in China, it's being reported today that the country's infamous movie pirates have unleashed a $1 bootleg copy of Spiderman 3, a movie which is reported to have cost over $500 million dollars to make -- the most expensive movie ever made.
Earlier this month, the US filed 2 complaints with the WTO claiming that China was not doing enough to punish music and movie pirates and that its restrictions on entertainment imports violated WTO trade rules.
China immediately criticized the move and Vice Premier Wu Yi, who heads the country's economic dialogue with the US, bluntly warned that the complaints would bruise bilateral trade ties.
He said that the complaints to the WTO will "badly damage" cooperation, and that China has gone to great lengths to enforce copyright protections.
"The United States Trade Representative, the USTR, has totally ignored the massive strides China has made," Wu told an intellectual property forum in Beijing.
The U.S. action "flies in the face of the agreement between the two countries' leaders to propose dialogue as a way of settling disputes," Wu said, adding that never before had a WTO member simultaneously mounted two cases against another country.
"This will have an utterly negative impact and will inevitably badly damage bilateral intellectual property cooperation," she said, while also warning it would "harm" cooperation over market access issues.
"The Chinese government is extremely dissatisfied about this, but we will proactively respond according to the related WTO rules and see it through to the end," Wu added.
Yet, in a tragic bit of irony, the mega blockbuster movie Spiderman 3 has already surfaced on the streets of Beijing at reported $1 dollar a copy.
The movie cost in excess of $500 million USD to make, making it the most expensive movie ever made, and the fact that it is already in the hands of Chinese pirates is certain to make the MPAA and thus their REPs in the WTO quite angry to say the least.
China, for its response, noted that it has formulated an anti-piracy action plan, and that it will will soon draft and implement 14 laws on intellectual property rights and usage, and issue explanations and guiding policies for handling copyright violation cases.
Wu also pointed out that 988 people were arrested for copyright infringement last year and that courts heard 6,441 cases.
"Over the last few years, the amount of manpower and work that China has put into protecting intellectual property rights and the results that have been achieved, have been unprecedented," she said.
"Every year we have nationwide events to protect intellectual property and we have always kept up the pressure on the pirates. The effects of this clean-up get better every year."
However, Wu also admitted that a lot of work lay ahead.
"At the moment, China's burden is heavy and the road is long, with relatively little of its own intellectual property, weak competitiveness, continuous piracy disputes and a prominence of fake products," she said.
"It's cheap to pirate goods, but expensive to protect copyright ... and society as a whole does not know enough about the problem," Wu added.
"It's too expensive to go to the cinema to watch movies," said Beijing resident Duan Nana. "This has a lot to do with why people are rushing to buy fake DVDs and watch movies at home. It's very common and it's logical."
What happens next is anybody's guess but, something tells me that the MPAA isn't too thrilled about the fact that the most expensive movie ever made is being peddled for little more than a dollar in a country of 1.6 billion people, and that any chance that the US would ease up in it's complaints to the WTO are gone for good.
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