Posted on 04/12/2006 7:06:11 AM PDT by Salo
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's computer manufacturers must install operating software before their goods leave the factory gates, the latest effort to address the thorny issue of piracy before President Hu Jintao visits the United States.
The order was given in a notice issued jointly by the Ministry of Information Industry, the State Copyright Bureau and the Ministry of Commerce on March 31 and released to reporters on Monday.
Chinese counterfeiting is a major irritant in U.S.-China trade and American software firms have said they want to see progress on the issue at the 2006 meeting of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade in Washington on Tuesday.
"Computers manufactured within the country's borders should have pre-installed authorised operating software systems when they leave the factory," the notice said.
Wang Ziqiang, director of the copyright management department at the State Copyright Bureau, said the notice was not about reacting to foreign criticism.
"This is not because of foreign pressure," he told reporters. "This is about the country's economic development."
Computer manufacturers and operating systems providers must also report to the Ministry of Information Industry before the end of February each year the number of computers sold and the number of operating systems installed.
Work units or individuals found to be installing pirate software would be investigated by the Copyright Bureau, the notice said.
Some computer manufacturers were already moving toward pre-installing operating systems.
Last week, TCL Group, which mainly makes televisions and mobile phones, signed an agreement with Microsoft Corp to pre-install its Windows operating systems on all of its personal computer product lines.
Hu is scheduled to visit Microsoft's headquarters before he meets President Bush on April 20.
But Wang said it would be up to China's computer manufacturers, which include market leader Lenovo Group Ltd. and its second-largest PC maker Founder Technology Group Co. Ltd., to decide what operating systems to use.
Foreign PC makers would also be affected by the notice, which mandates that retailers install operating systems on imported computers before they are sold.
Dell Inc, the third-largest PC seller in China, and Hewlett-Packard Co. have been aggressively pushing into China's ultra-competitive PC market.
A separate notice issued jointly by four ministries mandates that all government departments ensure the computer equipment they purchase is installed with authorised software.
Wink, wink.
Pings.
This just means the factory will pirate the software directly.
It means MS will be rolling in blood money.
Chinese computers, chinese gov't with access to MS source code (previous articles)? No sir, I don't like it.
> China's computer manufacturers must install operating
> software before their goods leave the factory gates, ...
I imagine that FreeDOS qualifies, but it would make more
sense to install some distro of Linux. That would, however,
compel the makers to ensure there are Linux drivers for all
the bits in the box.
The Red Chinese government is hoodwinking MS and the US government. They say computers manufactured there must run a legal OS, but really it's said for two reasons.
The first is to push MS to give them the Windows source code in return for a promise to make MS software sell all over China. Any source code passed through China will end up with all sorts of traps and holes for Red Chinese security to get business and political intel.
Second, the "legal" OS that will go on those computers will largely be a Chinese home brew OS for internal use or, free Linux for export computers. The latter just makes their stuff cheaper v. our mfg. goods.
"The first is to push MS to give them the Windows source code in return for a promise to make MS software sell all over China. Any source code passed through China will end up with all sorts of traps and holes for Red Chinese security to get business and political intel."
People think you are spouting a conspiracy theory when you say things like this but it's really true. We had a retired FBI agent who is now a security consultant come to our office and he said that in Chinese universities the computer science students do a unit on hacking and how to get around firewalls. He also said that the Russian mob will hack into any site for a fee.
There's a lot more state-sponsored (or allowed) spying like this going on than most people want to accept. Pretty sobering stuff.
Get a sufficiently large number of people spending their days trying to get bullet lists in MS Word to work right and their economy is guaranteed to tank.
""China targets PC makers in anti-piracy move.""
April Fools!!!!!
LOL!
Not only that, but their PCs should be at least as insecure as the average western one.
Well, that's easy. They can still provide a "bare" system at no increase in software cost and minimal increase in labor cost just by installing the a free OS. The the buyer still has the option of installing whatever OS he wants at no additional cost, including one he already owns.
I'm sure with a BILLION Chinese and 25% of them engineers, they can find a couple guys to write a driver.
Oh yeah, that's all we need; millions of new spam-bots on the Chinese subnets.
(Fortunately, I have almost of them firewalled out.)
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