“Yue Sui Xiang”, or “Comes with Music” in Chinese, has launched in the land of little factories, dotted across the entire region, pumping out everything from your television set to the shampoo you use. It’ll be available on one of eight devices initially: Nokia X6 32GB and Nokia X6 16GB, Nokia 5230, Nokia 5330, Nokia 5800w, Nokia 6700s, Nokia E52 and Nokia E72i, with the cheapest one being $185 before tax.
Unlike the UK, Finland, and many other countries, China is getting the DRM free version of the service, meaning that people will be able to grab as many files as they want and then transfer them to as many devices as they want. While that sounds brilliant, why not just go to your local corner store and pick up a CD with hundreds of mp3 files? Yes, it’s illegal, but this is China we’re talking about. Microsoft made their Windows operating system available for around $10, double what the going rate for the pirated version is, and guess what … people still didn’t bother going legit.
In a country with over a billion people, the government has much bigger things to worry about than copyright violations. Whenever the America record studios or movie houses get upset, they’ll gather up a few pirates, declare the war on piracy a success, and then let the pirates out of jail as if nothing ever happened.
The battle is lost.
[Via: Press Release]
[Photo via Flickr user GraemeNicol]