Copyright and Libraries

Interesting comparison from a Times columnist, money quote:

"Here is a thought experiment worth considering the next time that there is ill-considered talk about tightening copyright law. Battered and not properly loved, the public library is an outrageous attempt to encourage its infringement. These are taxpayer-funded institutions that buy books in large numbers and encourage people to share them, thereby denying repeat sales to book publishers who are fighting to deliver growth in a market that can be described as mature."

Cross my palm with silver . . . .

A Hollywood writer unloads:

Herro!

Japanzine does a 'best of' for their long-running agony-uncle Kazuhide: prease to looking!

Random Facts On Wikipedia

Britain has more university graduates than any other country in the EU, the USA still has more graduates than China, and Russia has more graduates than Britain, France and Germany combined.

Sign Of The Times . . .

The US now has more choreographers than metal-casters,. Meanwhile, Chinese automobile manufacturing passed the eight million mark last year.

The Real Facts About The Sino-blogosphere

This post over at Mylaowai's blog amazed me. I meet a lot of people who've been to China (i.e., stayed in a hotel in Beijing for a week) and when asked what they thought about the political situation say things like 'nothing can stop the liberating power of the internet' and 'dictatorship cannot survive in the modern age' - well yes it can folks. I guess the first time I realised this was when I read this front cover China Daily piece (yeah, I used to read that rag, but it was soft, strong, and very absorbing let me tell you):

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Taipei yesterday to oppose moves toward independence in the island province.

Defying the hot weather, throngs of people held banners declaring their opposition to moves to change the island's "official name" from the "Republic of China" to "Taiwan" - a move supported by former "president" Lee Teng-hui.

The demonstration, which was joined by around 1,000 taxis and private cars, was also in response to a protest held by pro-independence forces at the weekend.

Banners displayed by marchers on the orderly and good natured anti-independence demonstration, which was joined by many passers-by, read: "Against Taiwan Independence", "I am Taiwanese and Chinese as well" and "Direct links for transport, post and trade between Taiwan and the mainland will lead Taiwan to prosperity".

Other marchers sent a very simple but clear message to those seeking to split Taiwan from its motherland, displaying the word "Chinese" on their T-shirts.

Responding to the pro-independence demonstration in Taipei on Saturday, a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs' Office in Beijing dismissed the concept of "Taiwan independence".

The spokesman said the demonstration is one of the steps being taken by Taiwan pro-independence forces seeking the "gradual independence of Taiwan".

The demonstration, a move which intends to separate Taiwan from China, goes against the majority of Taiwan people's desire for peace, stability and development, said the spokesman.

"It has seriously damaged cross-Straits relations and gone against the primary interests of Taiwan people," he said.

"We believe that Taiwan compatriots will make a distinction between right and wrong and oppose pro-independence activities in any form," he added.

There are no forces that can prevent the final reunification of China, he noted.

"The so-called name-change that Lee Teng-hui called for was to separate Taiwan from China. But China will never break up," an angry demonstrator at the anti-independence demonstration was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency.

Ninety-two-year-old Xu Yue-li told Xinhua that she loves China and recognizes herself as Chinese.

"China is my mother and I firmly oppose the name change," she said.

The picture that accompanied the story, I hope the extras
they used were well paid.

Now, up until this point i had been telling myself that, like a lot of papers in the west, CD was just cherry picking the stories that matched with their position and not including those that disagreed with it, but this was a clear example of them making stuff up. I emailed a friend of mine who had covered the Taipei demos for Taiwan News newspaper and he sent me an email listing the following facts:

1) There had been a demonstration that day, but it had been a pro-independence one

2) The counter-demonstration organised by the KMT had had only a few hundred people at it, most of them old party members who still believe the old "We're going to liberate the mainland" line

3) The CD piece was therefore total bollocks and the details listed in it had been made up

From that moment on I started to view CD not as a source of (however biased) information, but as a kind of infotainment amusing only for the extravagance of the lies that they thought they could get away with. After reading Mylaowai's piece I'm going to extend the same view to the (unblocked) Chinese blogosphere as well.

Sometimes you want to go where nobody knows your name . . .

Leo Lewis totally nails the fin de siecle excess of expat boozing in this brilliant piece. Does the recent market crash mark the end of such revelry? Almost certainly not, but it might mark the point when the pinnacle of such partying changes from Roppongi to the Bund.

Saipanocidal

An incredibly bile-filled report on life in the US dependent territory of Saipan, I have no way of knowing how much of this is true, but it makes for interesting reading all the same. The sweat-shop conditions for Asian imigrant labourers are not news to me, the various misdeeds of certain section of the male US mainland immigrant population are standard for the poorer parts of Asia (although the Hillblom case still shocked), the high level of corruption was quite surprising:

That candidate, late in the 2001 election, was shown to have paid a prospective voter $550 by check drawn on his campaign organization. A photocopy of the check was published in one of the two Saipan newspapers – not the one owned by his sponsor and former employer. The candidate's spokesman answered the charges. Unable to deny the allegations of vote-buying, the spokesman defended the practice – claiming the payments were an "accommodation" and that such payments are made out of the kindness of the candidate's heart. They represent "the island way." (He actually said that. You can't make this stuff up.) At least one other payment was disclosed later, also drawn on the candidate's campaign organization and similarly defended. Vote-buying, therefore, is openly argued to constitute acceptable conduct. And where did this candidate's money to buy votes come from? From the garment interests, of course. Because garment workers are paid nearly slave wages, the factory owners are able to amass enormous capital both to pay off United States Congressmen to maintain the CNMI's political status quo and to buy votes for their local candidate.

Bronowski: 100 Years

Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jacob Bronowski, as a student I took a science/philosophy class in which his masterpiece, 'The Ascent Of Man', featured largely. This piece has always stayed with me:

Is what we call logical thinking learned?

The number one rant that a lot of expats have about their Chinese collegues is that they seem to operate according to a different kind of logic. Well, according to this very interesting Colbert Report interview with Malcolm Gladwell, maybe they do.

Government Singapore-style?

Read an interesting piece in the Taipei Times this morning comparing the politics and economies of Singapore and Taiwan. I was struck by how both of these places represent in their own way a possible path for development for other Asian countries, especially mainland China.

Will China develop into a one-party state with all the trappings of democracy - the kind of state that Timothy Garton-Ash described as a 'demokratura' (democracy + Soviet-style nomenklatura)? Or will it follow the Taiwanese path and become a far freer state with a developed economy, but without the political and ethnic unity which Singapore enjoys - at least on the surface.

There is also Hong Kong, political unstable due to broken promises on the part of the central government, but with economic growth and power which is still a striking contrast to anyone who visits from the developed world, let alone from mainland China.

The things which can be found in all of these places are high levels of materialism (Singapore's Five C's being perhaps the most famous example), high levels of growth (at least by western standards) and a yearning (at least within 30% of the population) for strong, even dictatorial, leadership.

Of course, China is large enough to contain all of these models and more in one single (tolerably) unitary state, and probably will do.

Sexy Thai Air Hostesses In Cat Fight

Figure that should get the search engines buzzing, here it is gratis the Russian state news RIAN Novosti website

Want ice with that?

Man, I have got to go to this bar!

Herschel Smith Lecture: Moral Rights

The FOARP attended a lecture the other day given by a visiting Canadian professor on the question of moral rights in copyrighted works - my impression? At least in the UK the issues surrounding moral rights are something that sounds alright but are actually worth very little, as the small amount of case law that it has produced shows. I guess it keeps the academics on their toes, and in less business-oriented jurisdictions (like France) might get people quite exercised, but that's what the English Channel is there for!