Waves of enforcement…or the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

IP owners of the world unit! The end of piracy in China as we know it is at hand. The numbers of article in the news yesterday about Beijing’s new efforts to confront (Olympic only) piracy was more than on just about any other topic outside of Hu Jintao’s latest trip to Japan.Which means that the government is really going to take this seriously…this week. I hope you didn’t have your hopes up.Of course I’m pessimistic. I live here. I’ve seen it all before. Specifically, there are three reasons why I think that IP enforcement is not going to change much in China after this week.1. It is in the government’s personal and direct financial interest to protect Olympic IP. They are the sponsors of the games and they directly benefit from the sale of legitimate products. Not to mention the face they lose when their “own” officially licensed products are knocked off. This means that while protection of Olympic IP will be stellar (as will the games in general—regardless of your politics, if you don’t think that the CCP will make damn sure that this is the best Olympics ever you’re nuts!) protection for the rest of us will be business as usual.2. This week just happened to coincide with a new round of US complaints to the WTO about “rampant” copyright violations. Within the same week of the US complaints China just happened to have 42 million pieces of illegal media?! If they can get that much in a week they have the best police force in the world and are just sandbagging the other 51 weeks of the year (likely sandbagging), or they stockpile over time just for events like this (VERY likely) or piracy is so out of control over here that 42 million pieces is just a drop in the bucket and it really only does take a week to collect that much (also VERY likely). Point being, once this round of bad international press is over so to will the enforcement.3. All assumptions aside, the press said that 25% of the destroyed media came from Guangdong Province (where I live). If so, how is it possible that I’ve still got 4 illegal shops operating within a block from my house and twice that many on the block around my office building?! I’ll believe that copy right protection will improve when they can close down the stores selling nothing but knock offs.But that’s how things go in China. Enforcement du jur is the MO here. If you get caught doing anything illegal, I’m convinced it’s just dumb (bad) luck.Take street cops, for example. The traffic police don’t chase pick pockets or clear away illegal street vendors. They just watch traffic—and then they only watch for specified violations each day. Think I’m making this up? I once chased down two guys hacking the lock off my bike. The traffic cop on the corner box couldn’t/wouldn’t even call the police station. Anyone else that’s ever driven here knows that “random” police stops means white vans on Mondays, black sedans on Tuesdays, right turns against the light on Wednesdays, etc.Boarder security is another great example. All of the Shenzhen boarders have luggage scanners. For fun stand by one and listen to the boarder agents talk about who they’ll stop next, watch them take fruit (and then watch other’s in back eat it), watch how many people DON’T put their luggage through the scanner (I almost never do—I walk fast and pretend to not speak Chinese; they almost never stop me). There is nothing “secure” about it. The only people that ALWAYS have to scan their baggage are Middle Eastern looking folk.This is not meant to a call to illegal arms. Rather, I’m just pointing out the fact that while sale of Olympic paraphernalia will be outstandingly legal for the next 18 months there most likely will be little if any change in any other IP protection in China; except for the random weeks of enforcement due to external circumstances.Waves in….waves out….in…out…