A DVD store in Shijiazhuang that we visited was busy clearing the shelves of all the inappropriate media in anticipation of a visit by the police. By inappropriate I mean pirated titles. As you can see by the empty shelf space there really are not many non-pirated titles available. The music and movie industry can continue to try and get self-serving laws passed in America but it will be to no avail. What they might try doing instead is delivering to the Chinese market what it wants. What does the market want? New content--not ten year old movies that the industry could not make money selling in other markets. Their is one other thing the market wants and that is DVDs at an affordable price. Many other types of companies have come to China and managed to make money selling things at prices much lower than those they use in America. Frankly I think that Hollywood will never learn and will eventually be crushed along with their outdated business model.
Hi,
Here in Europe we hear often about the 'weird' Chinese market for pirated media. This is the first time I read that only ten year old movies should be available there, though. Is it so all over China? It is really amazing that Western media producers can't make good use of China's growing economy anyway :-O
Bye,
YK
Posted by: YiKong | 2008.01.03 at 10:42 AM