Report: iTunes Movies and iBooks Stores in China Ordered Closed by Chinese State Agency

[Nunyabinez]

Most normal people don't own shell companies, only rich people and rich businesses. Apple invents all their patents in USA, sells them for pennies to an Irish shell company. Taxes Uncle Sam collects on that are fractions of a penny.

That shell company then licenses those patents to Apple for billions. The shell company makes billions and pays taxes in other countries while Apple uses those patent expenses as further tax deductions in USA.

And why do they do this? Because the US government allows this to be legal. If all you social warriors want to be mad at someone, be mad at congress because they could stop this any time they wanted. But they don't because they use the same methods themselves.

If you don't like someone driving what you think is too fast in your neighborhood, you get the speed limit changed, you don't criticize them for driving the speed limit.

 

[igorsky]

have you tried to say the word **** or **** on american tv? heck, you cant even say it on here without getting a warning

You must not watch American movies, watch American cable channels, or read American books.
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I know that money rules the roost, but I say good riddance with China! Do the same, ban all exports from China! Much of it is junk anyway!

I'd say their best export is cheap labor.

 

[chirpie]

It will be fascinating to watch China morph into something freer and more open as time goes on. The powers-that-be want us to all become like the Chinese, but the opposite will happen.

"It will?" In a great many ways it already has. You just need to pick two different points in time to measure that difference. 1970 - 1990? Big changes. 1990 - Present. Even bigger changes. They're doing their best to curtail the capitalist beast, but the genie has been out of the bottle for a while now.

 

[igorsky]

"It will?" In a great many ways it already has. You just need to pick two different points in time to measure that difference. 1970 - 1990? Big changes. 1990 - Present. Even bigger changes. They're doing their best to curtail the capitalist beast, but the genie has been out of the bottle for a while now.

Don't know about this. People like to throw around the term "illusion of freedom"...well there's no country on earth for which this is more applicable than China. Their authoritarian regime can pull the plug on this experiment any time they want.

 

[chirpie]

Their authoritarian regime can pull the plug on this experiment any time they want.

No, they really can't. If the regime told all businesses it was back to strict communism, the revolts would be very real. I don't think that's up for debate, is it?

 

[igorsky]

No, they really can't. If the regime told all businesses it was back to strict communism, the revolts would be very real. I don't think that's up for debate, is it?

China has shown an open willingness to crush dissent, so I think their intentions are open for debate. Governments often underestimate the people's will to revolt until after they act.

I guess this is two separate debates...would China pull the plug and, two, would the people revolt. Probably yes to both.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

If this isn't a wake up call to Chinese censorship and human rights abuse, i don't know what would jog people out of their daze.

Solution is to .... move manufacturing plants back to western countries which have our values.

 

[C00rDiNaT0r]

If this isn't a wake up call to Chinese censorship and human rights abuse, i don't know what would jog people out of their daze.

Solution is to .... move manufacturing plants back to western countries which have our values.

In much much longer term (10+ years), we can move production back to the US, if we introduce subjects related to anything manufacturing jobs require these days, into high school and/or college courses.

For the shorter term, maybe someone can establish training institutions similar to dev bootcamp in the shorter term, with guaranteed employment post-graduation?

 

[69Mustang]

I know that money rules the roost, but I say good riddance with China! Do the same, ban all exports from China! Much of it is junk anyway!

That's a dangerous and stupid game to play. What happens if our tit of banning Chinese exports results in their tat of refusing to sell us rare earth minerals? Creating a global game of chicken because Apple can't sell some movies and books... yeah no.

If this isn't a wake up call to Chinese censorship and human rights abuse, i don't know what would jog people out of their daze.

Solution is to .... move manufacturing plants back to western countries which have our values.

In much much longer term (10+ years), we can move production back to the US, if we introduce subjects related to anything manufacturing jobs require these days, into high school and/or college courses.

For the shorter term, maybe someone can establish training institutions similar to dev bootcamp in the shorter term, with guaranteed employment post-graduation?

Moving the manufacturing back to the US or Western Civ countries sounds like a good idea in principle. But are you also willing to take on the associated costs?
1. Higher priced items - this is typically where the general public loses their fervor for advocacy. "I'm all for supporting X cause... unless I have to pay more for it." That's when the status quo seems more tolerable.
2. Increased local environmental impact - Manufacturing is a dirty business. No two ways around it. China's air quality is evidence of that. Western countries would insist on better environmental controls. Costlier. Circle back to 1.
3. Increased manufacturing cost - wages, benefits, raw materials (from China), etc. Circle back to 1.

There's more but in the end, it will all go back to point 1. How much are we willing to pay for that moral high ground? History says not much. Let's face it, we owe a lot of our enjoyment of technology to overlooking the things we're griping about today. How many of us are willing to go beyond the lip service of "we should just move stuff out of/not buy anything from"?

 

[iPadCary]

... a violation of one [Conditutional amendment] just makes it easier to break the rest.

THIS.
That's all it takes to get the ball rolling down the slippery slope.
Change one Amendment for "safety" or "the children", which, of course, will be unpopular to object to.
Then once you've got your precedent-setting foot in the door,
the floodgates are broken wide open for more, shall we say, less benign Consitutional "improvements" ....

 

[bretm]

The best way to prove the movie false would obviously be to allow it to be shown. But well they don't seem to get that concept. Further promoting the movie.

 

[bushido]

You must not watch American movies, watch American cable channels, or read American books.
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I'd say their best export is cheap labor.

well he did say "anything" and you certainly cant say those things on ABC, AMC ...

i remember some celeb being asked what he liked about Europe and he was like I CAN SAY BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP at 1 in the afternoon!

not to say we dont get our own share of cencorship like The Walking Dead gets edited on tv for its amount of gore but to say "not anything" is a bit redic

 

[nicho]

The best way to prove the movie false would obviously be to allow it to be shown. But well they don't seem to get that concept. Further promoting the movie.

Uhhh, did you accidentally think this was a post on The Interview being banned in North Korea?

 

[JoEw]

If this isn't a wake up call to Chinese censorship and human rights abuse, i don't know what would jog people out of their daze.

Solution is to .... move manufacturing plants back to western countries which have our values.

Were having a bigger affect on China by inserting our capitalist system into their country.
Obviously China has a long way to go, but chinese loves American brands and culture. Plus our iPhones are made at very little cost to us, while the chinese people obtain and better style of living in the process.

I think a lot of people never see the other side of the coin when it comes to free trade. Where in the western world are we going to find a town of 300,000 people to build iPhones 50 hours a week anyway?

 

[69Mustang]

THIS.
That's all it takes to get the ball rolling down the slippery slope.
Change one Amendment for "safety" or "the children", which, of course, will be unpopular to object to.
Then once you've got your precedent-setting foot in the door,
the floodgates are broken wide open for more, shall we say, less benign Consitutional "improvements" ....

How do you figure? We've had constitutional changes before. None of those changes lead to a floodgate opening. Why would these hypothetical changes lead to flood gates opening?

 

[R3k]

Just got back from a 10 day trip to China and noticed that the App store was unusable. iCloud photo library worked for a while and then was useless as well


The internet is a mess over there, VPN or no. There are roving blackouts on websites and services, things work sometimes and then go down for large or short spans of time. Some websites 1 out every 5 refreshes work.


I couldn't get through to the Macrumors forums at some points, even though the front page was fine. Reddit of all places was almost always fine while i was there, as was all the Wiki pages i visited except one about in development US naval warships.


Google services don't work without VPN, and the government is actively cracking down on VPN so some of the larger services like ExpressVPN were pretty useless while some of the free VPN iOS apps fared better.


It all seemed at odds with the vibe of the cities of Shanghai and Beijing where things seemed reasonably switched on, all the kids were glued to their smart phones.

 

[\-V-/]

Just got back from a 10 day trip to China and noticed that the App store was unusable. iCloud photo library worked for a while and then was useless as well


The internet is a mess over there, VPN or no. There are roving blackouts on websites and services, things work sometimes and then go down for large or short spans of time. Some websites 1 out every 5 refreshes work.


I couldn't get through to the Macrumors forums at some points, even though the front page was fine. Reddit of all places was almost always fine while i was there, as was all the Wiki pages i visited except one about in development US naval warships.


Google services don't work without VPN, and the government is actively cracking down on VPN so some of the larger services like ExpressVPN were pretty useless while some of the free VPN iOS apps fared better.


It all seemed at odds with the vibe of the cities of Shanghai and Beijing where things seemed reasonably switched on, all the kids were glued to their smart phones.


Edit- As i try to post this the first time, the Macrumors forums are down for everyone. Im in the US. Coincidence? wtf.

Use a VPN. I use NordVPN and it bypasses The Great Firewall of China. Can't really do much with spotty, crap internet though.

 

[AliMacs]

I'll chime in on this one:

If Apple is so righteous and since they are the LGBT rights supporting company who also protects citizen from govt overreaching privacy policies they should pull out entirely of the Chinese market. A country that does not respect democracy unless it's in the form they structure and the lack of freedom of speech on any subject matter exposing how corrupt their govt is is a country not worth doing business in.

There is a real double standard in China. You have state owned companies that can thrive but foreign companies cannot do business without being partners with one of these Chinese state owned companies. You must expose your IP to allow manufacturing. How do you think there are so many knock off smartphones coming out of China?

Stand up tall and grow a pair, Apple. But you follow where the money is and that philiosphy of business is how you run it. You beg and plead with these corrupt people for what so you can get a piece of that rotten pie? Chinese market based solely on the ludicrous amount of money these peasants have and spend really appealing to any business but at the cost of always having to watch your own back is a huge negative.

Just research on energy renewable companies that have failed in China because they have all their technology stolen then pushed out of the country by the same state-owned partner companies - then having that same company SELL back to the USA and our govt BUYING U.S. TECHNOLOGY BACK from the company that STOLE the technology.

When I comes down to it - it's always money talks and Apple is the same as every other business. Stand up for once and keep your brand away from these Chinese - you are so innovative you say so innovate a way to not do business with these people.

 

[R3k]

Use a VPN. I use NordVPN and it bypasses The Great Firewall of China. Can't really do much with sport, crap internet though.

I was using Express VPN, Hexatech, VPNMaster, WhaleVPN and TunnelBear VPN. All pretty frustrating, some more than others.

 

[AliMacs]

You guys also forget the biggest online streaming service: LeTV - state owned pirated stuff blatantly available to everyone. You can find almost all Hollywood movies with Chinese subtitles and you don't even have to search they are listed front page.

It's sad if you think people will pay for anything in China - especially NOT digital content. They are stolen everyday and the govt doesn't care because it's not pirated Chinese content - but that's ironic because Chinese content is already pirated by the same Chinese that stand proud about being anti-pirate.

From software to movies to videos games - no one buys original products - everything is sold knock off or stolen. You bet they can afford multiple 128GB iPhone 6S Pluses but they will almost never pay for apps.

 

[cmwade77]

This is exactly why pretty much all of the current presidential candidates are so bad. Really, all of them want the U.S. government to have this level of control in some form or another. We need to all stand up and say no.

Additionally, this should be a wakeup call for ALL american companies to pull out of China immediately and completely. After all, how long before China comes in and starts shutting down other companies?

 

[R3k]

I'll chime in on this one:

If Apple is so righteous and since they are the LGBT rights supporting company who also protects citizen from govt overreaching privacy policies they should pull out entirely of the Chinese market. A country that does not respect democracy unless it's in the form they structure and the lack of freedom of speech on any subject matter exposing how corrupt their govt is is a country not worth doing business in.

There is a real double standard in China. You have state owned companies that can thrive but foreign companies cannot do business without being partners with one of these Chinese state owned companies. You must expose your IP to allow manufacturing. How do you think there are so many knock off smartphones coming out of China?

Stand up tall and grow a pair, Apple. But you follow where the money is and that philiosphy of business is how you run it. You beg and plead with these corrupt people for what so you can get a piece of that rotten pie? Chinese market based solely on the ludicrous amount of money these peasants have and spend really appealing to any business but at the cost of always having to watch your own back is a huge negative.

Just research on energy renewable companies that have failed in China because they have all their technology stolen then pushed out of the country by the same state-owned partner companies - then having that same company SELL back to the USA and our govt BUYING U.S. TECHNOLOGY BACK from the company that STOLE the technology.

When I comes down to it - it's always money talks and Apple is the same as every other business. Stand up for once and keep your brand away from these Chinese - you are so innovative you say so innovate a way to not do business with these people.

China is too big of a market for Apple to drop based on principle. Google didn't pull out on principle, they just put on a PR spin to seem like they did.

China is a land of contradictions. T1 cities like Shanghai can be pretty switched on in general, and can be pretty progressive on a local government level, all the while their 'federal' government is passing draconian laws along with the smart ones.
Even as China pollute their groundwater in areas, they have a surplus of wind power turbines in others (some of which cant be connected to the grid in other municipals unfortunately)

 

[\-V-/]

I was using Express VPN, Hexatech, VPNMaster, WhaleVPN and TunnelBear VPN. All pretty frustrating, some more than others.

NordVPN is a lot better than those.

 

[filmantopia]

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015#.VxmuL2PO7FI

America is not bad at all. There's virtually no censorship here. China is a Big Brother hellhole.

Wait, what? The U.S. is very careful not to censor anything. There's a Nazi political party and the KKK. Heck, you can get away with crimes here as long as you claim it's a protest. Are there nations that give more freedom of speech? Certainly not the U.K., France, or Germany.

Give us an example of "pretty bad" censorship in the US.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/18/tech/web/google-transparency-report/

It's already happening, but we're on the cusp of a serious wave of government censorship on the internet. Much of it is directly government related (to protect government agencies like the NSA from public outrage), but a great deal of it is/will be via corporate interests, as big media and corporations pour more money into the most popular social media outlets on the web. In a decade or two the internet may not be the hub of free speech like you and I think of it today. Net neutrality and web privacy are under attack, but whether or not they succeed through legislative means, they will find a way to subvert public discourse that threatens the corporate/business giants' profit agendas.

 

[steve333]

How can China be a member of the WTO and have favored nation trading status with us when they don't follow fair trade practices and pull stunts like this?
Where's the retaliation from Obama The Spineless, or to be fair, any of our gutless leaders?