Open Source and China

• How the world benefits from Chinese piracy
  • Chinese IP piracy — if what we’re talking about can properly be called that, given the degree to which it is condoned by the Chinese government — is wonderful for China, for its economic growth, for helping hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty, and for the sake of global innovation more broadly. You and I, as US consumers, actually benefit from it. The only losers are the large US corporations who seek to extract rents from various copyrights and patents.
  • Raustiala and Sprigman make a strong case that Chinese piracy ... is actually an economically vital form of innovation.
  • Nearly all creations rest on prior work, and the ability to freely copy and refine existing designs fuels fields as varied as fashion, finance, and software. Copying can also foster stronger competition, grow markets, and build brands… Many Chinese have gained valuable design and manufacturing skills by copying goods originally produced elsewhere.
  • Companies:
    • Xiaomi, a phone company which has sold some 7 million phones, for a total of more than $1.6 billion, since its launch less than two years ago. Xiaomi copies a lot of Apple’s innovations, but it also generates many of its own, and it iterates much faster than Apple does.
    • Much the same can be said for Weibo, which started by copying Twitter but which at this point is arguably more advanced than the original.
    • Or look at the Chinese YouTube, Youku, which is displacing television in large part because it has no copyright verification.