VeryCD, one of the largest P2P seed data website, halted its audio-visual download service on Jan25th, 2011, arousing a great response from Chinese internet users. One of the reasons that is being currently reported saying that Chinese authorities are stepping up their anti-P2P efforts with news of a joint declaration made by the country’s Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and Ministry of Public Security earlier this month that anybody caught sharing copyrighted material without authorization will face criminal penalties of between 3 and 7 years in prison.(http://www.zeropaid.com/news/92299/china-authorities-threaten-bittorrent-sites-with-prison-time/) This new penalty has already led many P2P site operators to rethink how and what content is shared. As a result, Subpig.com and Uubird.com have also removed their downloading features. Interviewed by the Global Times, Huang Yimeng, the CEO of VeryCD.com said that “The regulations are getting stricter and we’re not able to legally provide a similar amount of content as before and That’s why we have to change our content offering”.
However, as we know that there is always a gap between the time when the new episodes of new American series are legally available and the time when they are actually released, forcing people to seek out elsewhere illegal alternatives to make up for a gap in the marketplace. Additionally, Online distribution affords a level of convenience that consumers want and yet, many copyright holders refuse to allow. But when considering the National conditions of China, there is no way that there would be lots of consumers actually purchasing those expensive DVDs. Therefore, as long as the gap exists, people will seek out the content on BitTorrent and via other P2P programs and services.
Furthermore, when it is not convenient to download freely from the website, people will seek pirate CDs for help and thus stimulating the whole pirate industry chain which won’t be a good thing for China. However, Chinese Internet users who are used to high quality audios and videos would go for Storm, PPTV and other large-scale video broadcast platforms and therefore leading to the large benefits flooding to those industry.
Further actions should be taken in order to better and fully regulate Chinese pirate industry. Halt of VeryCD’s audio and visual download service is just the beginning of the story and there is a long way to go.
When I was doing the pre-reading, I came across the poll (as the following picture shows) which links to what I have been learning during the recent marketing and business statistics classes.
People who are responsible for the analysis of those data collected by this poll should be aware that the information is somewhat biased. Firstly, this poll is conducted by the readers of this article and their opinions won’t be necessarily representative of the whole public. Also, the phrasing and the attitude of this article might shape the thoughts of readers and therefore, shape the results of this poll – we might get results as “expected”. Those biased data might lead us to a wrong track, as a result marketers should always take a second thought before determining the method of data collecting.
It’s also a similar idea to targeting which is a crucial step in marketing. We have to be clear about what the target is and ensure that we are using the right targeting strategies and targeting the right market segment. But before that, we should have a well-rounded knowledge of the mission and vision of our business just like we should know well about the purpose of our survey.
It’s always amazing when the knowledge learned from different subjects all link together and suddenly all of them make sense to me and therefore, the business world opens another window which helps me to think from another aspect.
My Carbon Footprint is 5.009 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Through the items in the calculation, I was able to know what’s good and what should be changed.
Firstly, I’ll definitely keep walk as my first choice of commuting and will encourage my friends and family to walk with me. But for the long distance travel, its hard to change some basic transportation tools, however, I believe we do have the chance to encourage innovation in motive power of transportations in order to decrease CO2 emissions.
Moreover, during summer and winter, I should always keep an eye on the use of air conditioner and heater to maintain a suitable temperature. Also, It will be better to use double pane windows and figure our what kind of draft-proof my home is using and whether there is any better way to make it more sustainable. And for the hot water use, increasing the efficiency of washing machine and water heated as well as wrapping the water heater will help a lot.
Last but not the least, as suggested, questions about diet should be frequently asked to keep a relatively low food-print, such as what changes could I make to have a more locally-produced, vegetable-based, low carbon diet? And what benefits does that lead to for my personal health, my local economy and community, and the world at large? And maybe create a personal green plan as a guide.
Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) is a concept that frequently overlaps with similar approaches such as corporate sustainability, corporate sustainable development, corporate responsibility, and corporate citizenship. However, it doesn’t have a universal definition, many see it as the private sector’s way of integrating the economic, social, and environmental imperatives of their activities. As such, CSR closely resembles the business pursuit of sustainable development and the triple bottom line. In addition to integration into corporate structures and processes, CSR also frequently involves creating innovative and proactive solutions to societal and environmental challenges, as well as collaborating with both internal and external stakeholders to improve CSR performance.
But it’s still worthy of questioning whether the companies’ ultimate goal is to increase their profits through using sustainability plan to reach to more consumers as to make more sales. Moreover, I believe it will be much easier for a big and profitable companies to fulfill their goals of social responsibility. But for a small company, what they generate from their sales might only be able to satisfy their regular salaries and purchases and won’t be able to well complete their social responsibility.
Thus, I believe we should set up social responsibility according to companies’ current situations. Also, the measurement should also vary in different industries and different scales of companies.
