Monday, May 09, 2005

R2G: Dredging the Chinese (P2P) Flood

The China Daily runs an article on R2G, the first centralized music distribution platform in China. It will play a third-party function between service providers and content providers, organizing music licensing and monitoring its distribution. R2G's chief operating officer spreads some Chinese wisdom on how to make a business in the world's largest piracy market:
"It is just like controlling the flood. Blocking the flood with dust does not work. You have to dredge it. And that's exactly our business. Once pirated downloading is tracked, we will contact SPs offering such services and see if they are willing to join us."
And, what if these "pirates" and potential customers are not willing to join? From the FAQ on R2G's smooth English website:
R2G will track specific instances of online copyright violation of registered content using 2 proprietary tools - the Spider & Wasp crawling through major Service Providers and Search Engines in China with the result that all instances of unlicensed content will be uncovered in detail for follow-up legal action.
Uncovering is the provision of "data records services as legal evidence in copyright-related lawsuits" on the basis of "an agreement with China's Copyright Protection Centre". That sounds more like forking the flood than dredging to me: capitalize on those who cooperate; hand over those who don't to the government for copyright enforcement. Great doing business in China.

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