In a well-civilized country, people respects others work, and they also want their originality to be appreciated by others. Therefore, copyright is enforced by most governments in the world. It gives the creator of the original work the rights to determine who can reprint, perform, or use it financially in a limited of time. Although the law is similar in most countries, it is enforced differently in U.S. or in China. Both countries sometimes go to an opposite side of extreme.
Here, influenced by Western culture, originality is respected and appreciated by most of the people. Copyright laws effectively protect the creator and will punish the one who “steal” others’ works. Say you and me write a good story and publish it somewhere. It becomes famous, and many copies are reprinted. We get a lot of money, and we deserve it. If people want to use ideas from the story, they have to have permission from us and we can earn more financially. After a few years, the story should enter the public domain to benefit more people. However, I can keep renewing my copyright so people can ever never use it for free (if I want lots of money).
Disney’s Infinite reserved right
Walt Disney does pretty well about this. They will sue anyone who uses their films or characters in any form. Even though Alice in the Wonderland was not written by them, the film is, and who wants to dress up like Alice can’t be similar to the one in the film. Here is the tricky part: many of their cartoons or films are based on fairy tales or stories hundreds years ago, when copyright was not well-formed yet, or some are simply too old and entered the public domain. Yeah they don’t have to pay anything to “copy” the tale and we have to pay whole a lot to them. Another tricky part, if you want to use Beethoven’s music in your video you can because his songs have already entered the public domain. However, be careful about the information of the music track, because although the music itself is not copyrighted, the player is! Sometimes creators are overly protected and this will diminish people’s new ideas.
Here is another extreme in China. All songs, films, plays, TV shows are free on the internet. And you also know about tons of fake brand produced in China.
Like this pair of flip-flops?
Creators are so poorly protected by copyright laws. Most singers earn their income from live shows and commercials, not from selling their songs. Songs or films from U.S. can be easily downloaded for free in mainland China. This is not all bad (forgive me), but since the Chinese government is so strict, it does not allow some original works enter into China. The only chance that Chinese can enjoy songs and some movies is from the internet. And people love to share because eastern culture, especially the Chinese culture, does not appreciate originality that much as Western culture does. Trust me, I was never taught about citing sources or paraphrasing the sources at schools (and you don’t have to cite) in China.
Here we go. Two extremes, which one do you want to take?