U.S. Commerce Secretary Challenges China on Piracy
Speaking in Shanghai today, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez applauded the Chinese government's decision to require that all PCs made in China, or imported into China, be pre-loaded with legitimate software and that its own agencies buy computers with pre-loaded, licensed software. He then went on to reiterate the "three specific challenges facing China that need to be addressed in the very near term" that he had announced Tuesday. These are:
1. Lowering criminal thresholds for prosecuting those involved in commercial piracy and counterfeiting;2. Allowing greater market access for audiovisual products, and
3. Sharing factories' pirated disc exemplars with the international laboratories that trace pirated optical discs to their source.
Gutierrez said that these "are important improvements in IPR that have gone unaddressed by the Chinese for too long."