China Faces U.S. Sanctions in Electronic Copyright Piracy
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The Clinton Administration selected China today for possible trade sanctions unless the Beijing authorities close factories that each year produce about $1 billion worth of compact disks, videotapes and computer programs pirated from the United States without the payment of any royalties or acknowledgment of copyrights. The move underlines that now that the Administration has renewed China’s trade benefits and put human rights issues on the back burner, one of the main sources of friction between Washington and Beijing will be over trade issues and particularly copyright violations. American officials made clear today that unless the Chinese resolve the piracy matter, the Clinton Administration will not support China’s bid for membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Japanese Case Deferred The United States trade representative, Mickey Kantor, announcing the initiation of an investigation against China, postponed potential sanctions in a separate dispute against Japan. He put off action for 30 days over Japanese discrimination against American companies in government purchases of telecommunications and medical equipment. Mr. Kantor said these issues were being discussed in current Japanese-American trade talks, and, given the accession yesterday of a new prime minister in Tokyo, a brief delay was warranted. But with China, he said, the Clinton Administration would mount an immediate investigation into allegations that it had failed to protect American patents and copyrights, even though Beijing had promised last year to do so. If the two countries cannot resolve the issue in the next six months, Mr. Kantor is empowered by Congress to impose sanctions up to the equivalent damage being done to the American economy. That could mean 100 percent tariffs on roughly $1 billion in Chinese exports. “While, in general, China has improved intellectual-property rights laws and regulations in accord with the January 1992 memorandum of understanding,” Mr. Kantor’s office said in a written statement, “China’s enforcement of its laws and regulations is sporadic at best and virtually nonexistent for copyrighted works. Piracy is rampant in the audio-visual, computer software and publishing sectors, as well as in trademarks. Among the most egregious cases is the establishment of 26 CD and laser disk factories in central and southern China.” Big Business Seen The statement added that “these factories producing pirated CD’s had the capacity to manufacture up to 75 million CD’s for export to markets in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia and recently, Canada.” “In addition, China continues to maintain hidden quotas and non-transparent regulations that effectively keep U.S. intellectual-property products, especially in the audio-visual sector, out of the Chinese market,” it said. Mr. Kantor noted that during recent negotiations, the Chinese insisted that they had taken effective action to halt copyright infringements, despite the fact that pirated American goods were proliferating in shops right outside the meeting-room door. “While our negotiators were just in China last week, during a break in the negotiations, they went down to a particularly notorious street to see if they could buy any pirated U.S. software, computer software, products,” he said. “They were able to buy a Wordperfect 6.0 and a so-called DOS, MS-DOS product — took it back to the negotiations, and they presented them at the negotiating table, complete with Government-stamped receipts for these products. No action has been taken against these stores to date.” Asked if what the United States wanted was for all the factories producing pirated goods to be closed, Mr. Kantor answered: “Well, that would be a start. The fact is we have asked China to enforce their laws. Their laws, as written, are very strong; they’re just not enforced. China ought to enforce their laws in this area in order to protect the property rights of U.S. and other foreign companies. The failure to enforce these laws is having an adverse economic effect upon not only U.S., but other companies as well.” Source : query.nytimes.com |