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Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Chinese Gov’t says Shanzhai is also Innovation – What ?!

In a press conference yesterday, a government official from MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) said “Shanzhai” is also a kind of innovation. (The person is Yang Xue-shan, a Vice Minister of MIIT. And here is the the article about in it. http://tech.163.com/10/1201/03/6MPP67GH000915BD.html)

He thought as long as there is no infringement of copyright, the production of “Shanzhai” products should be encouraged. For readers who don’t know what “Shanzhai” means, maybe you cannot see the irony. But, “Shanzhai”, in fact, means copycat.

So, how could a copycat product not infringe copyright?? A professor in Foreign Trade University explained, it is because many of such copycats do not do a perfect job. They are not exactly like the real ones in close examination. For example, currently, “Shanzhai” iPad is a hot item in the market. But, in fact, the “Shanzhai” version of iPads use Google’s Android as operating system. So, strictly speaking, there is no copyright infringement. It even has a bit of innovation, as the manufacturer changes the OS to Android.

WOW!! So, that it is. Just like negative times negative equal positive, it seems to suggest: if you do the wrong thing, but not doing it perfectly, you are in fact doing a right thing. And you should be encouraged to do more.

(hmm … really interesting … something worth a deep thought …)

But, how about the person who really innovate and make the first iPad?? Should we encourage what he did?? Our government official seems offer no answer… And as the person lives far far away, in a country called the United State, he is not even in our government official’s jurisdiction!! So, why should our government official care?

That is how I see it … anyone has any ideas ??


Link to full article

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