Computer Solutions

here’s a piece from June

In China’s media Intellectual Property is still theft, as western liberalism struggles against western style nationalism online

A proxy battle over western values is being fought online in China, between liberals, nationalists, and the government. Meanwhile there are also large numbers of agnostics, who are just interested in getting to grips with the latest episode of Prisonbreak or Star Trek
Numerous websites in China offer myriad translations of western media, films and television, which is transforming the current generation of China’s youth. Different factions are cherry picking the content they find useful for themselves and their own agenda, and also have very little intention of paying for it.
The translation of western thought into the Chinese language has a long history, beginning in the Qing dynasty, fed by the anti-imperialist sentiment of the May 4th movement of 1911.
“At that time, in China the attitude was we needed to learn from the enemy, to learn how to be a strong nation. In the traditional Confucian model international power is not ranked very highly. Nationalism is a western import,” Liu Qing, professor of history at East China Normal University said.
Following a hiatus during the cultural revolution, when translations of western texts were only circulated for internal use by party members, from the late 1980s onward there has been an astronomical boom in the volume of information translated from the west, the vast majority without any copyright fees being paid. Nowadays online groups of volunteers translate the Guardian on the site Yeeyan, the Econcn group translate the Economist, Harvard Business Review, and other publications. Other groups translate entire TV series such as Prisonbreak, and feature films such as the new Star Trek movie, – which are then put online for free on sites such as youku.com, China’s version of youtube. Another side to the online translation phenomenon has emerged in the guise of Anti-CNN.com, which is very critical of western press, and offers translations with nationalist commentary. State media also widely translates western press, with entire state owned newspapers and magazines devoted to translation of foreign media, but have strict guidelines on content, and are also not allowed to accredit the source material. The state owned media also does not pay for the content.
“The whole younger generation, the youth culture, is becoming very westernized, but a part of that understanding of western culture is we need to be strong, tough and realistic on international issues, we have imported liberal values, but also nationalism from the west. You could not naively think we would just get liberalism,” Prof. Liu Qing said.
Under the precepts of communism property is theft, and by relation intellectual property is also theft – which partly explains why China’s government pays scant regard for intellectual copyright. – generations have grown up without believing it is morally wrong to use someone else’s’ copyright.
Professor Liu said “don’t misunderstand me- without this western content life in China would be very boring. It is also about economics- currently we cannot afford to pay for it.”
British media The Guardian, the Economist and the Financial Times have all embraced this chaotic situation in China with slightly differing strategies.
The relatively new site Yeeyan.com translates content from the Guardian and other liberal western media, and site founders hope to help build a civil society in China. According to Yeeyan advisor Isaac Mao the Guardian supports Yeeyan, by paying token royalties to translators, and providing contacts for other projects, such as book translations. The Yeeyan model is a community site, operating on a similar mode to wikipedia, with all registered users having editing rights. The site also resells content to major portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com.
The Economist has given a tacit nod to the Econcn site, which translates each month’s copy and distributes it via PDF. Econcn advertises subscriptions to the Economist print edition on the site.
Econcn.org administrator Shi Yi said via email: “Because we are non-profit organisation, the Economist gave us permission to translate articles. “ According to Shi Econcn has an exclusive contract for China.
Both Yeeyan and Econcn operate a policy of only distributing sensitive articles internally.
The FT on the other hand has an extremely successful Chinese portal, which not only offers paid for translations of FT articles, it also generates a lot of original content by local journalists, who are paid for their output. The FT site avoids sensitive topics, and focuses on finance and lifestyle, and some of the site editors are now popular figures on Chinese TV.
None of the sites in China translating foreign content are taken to task as they would be in London and the US by media barons, such as the mythical Lord Gnome and his lawyers, for copyright theft. In China, on the very rare occasion a foreign media has won a copyright case the award for damages is very low, not usually more than GBP 200.
“In traditional Chinese culture, and in communist times, intellectual property has been a concept unknown in China, information -it is a kind of invisible thing, something we would not associate with property, so only in the last 20 years has the government promoted this idea, with the market reforms. But in reality, piracy is a big business, if the government closed down the pirate industry it would put a lot of people out of work. Also the government doesn’t have the manpower- so it concentrates on control of political content, and also has an on and off campaign against pornography,” said Prof Liu Qing.
Each different site is dealt with differently by the authorities. So in practice, sites such as Yeeyan see a lot of government pressure, whilst Anti-CNN is tacitly supported as it provides an outlet for stronger nationalist sentiment, and the film translators are ignored, as long as they stick to translating mainstream entertainment.
According to Isaac Mao Yeeyan wants to create a sustainable bridge to western media, and is exploring different revenue models to make the site viable, and has private investment of around RMB 2 million per year, which helps to pay its permanent staff of 10. “The Guardian still holds almost all the commercial rights,” Mao said.
The site very much relies on its 6000+ volunteer translators to create its content of around 200 articles per day. “I call it sharism, the users like to share with their peers. The return is social respect,” Mao said.
Lu Yi, an independent translator commenting on the Yeeyan concept said: “Motivation can be multi-fold. And I am not sure the motivation of the site’s owner is fully aligned with its volunteer translators’ team. But it definitely helps people here understand foreign views on China and the world at large and values.”
The current main headache for the Yeeyan editors is censorship. “We face censorship daily on the more sensitive content, as the site has an organic eco system some user requests for translations hit sensitive topics, such as Tibet for instance. Censors contact us all the time, telling us the site will be shut down if certain content is not removed. Dealing with the censors we have to make sacrifices to survive,” Mao added.
“We have to see what will happen in the future, the authorities say they will control everything, whatever, but more and more people become involved, for instance when they lost hotmail (on June 1 Chinese authorities closed access to hotmail and other sites) it creates social motivation for change. We have a strong will to be a real bridge between two cultures, without too much guidance from the authorities, it is a freedom or death choice” Mao said.

Some useful links:
Youku Buzz – find out the latest interesting trends on China’s youtube http://buzz.youku.com/
Latest new media trends in China http://56minus1.com/
Translator sites: http://www.shooter.cn/

http://www.sfileydy.com/

To read Chinese media translated into English, as well as Chinese rap and other issues try www/zonaeuropa.com www.bokane.org, www.chinasmack.com, www.chinahush.com or www.danwei.org