In China Copyright Allegedly Means the Right To Copy!

I had an interesting conversation with a student yesterday about Chinese law. She’s a law postgraduate student, so you’d hope she’d know what she’s talking about.

The story started when I recently got connected to the university’s network. I didn’t realise until recently that our apartments were connected into the campus Local Area Network. Anyways, the college has among other things, a server with tons of movies and TV shows available to watch and download! Wow, I thought that this would be illegal and it’s just cos it’s China that nobody gives a shit!

However, this student told me that it is all within the law, which surprised me! At home, it would be definitely be illegal to host and download this stuff. She said that in China it is legal to download music and video once you will not make a profit from it! Intriguing and hard to believe! She also said it is illegal for people to sell DVD’s (cos they are making a profit from it) but it is fine for you to share the content of that DVD over the internet!

It all seems sort of wacky that this is all legal. I must consult some other sources to verify!