Sinking piracy is not a smart move from consumer's POV

Owning land is a relatively straightforward concept. You have the deeds, put a fence around it, a sign saying trespassers will be prosecuted, and that's it, lock, stock and barrel. Copyright issues and intellectual property rights (IPR) are more complicated, though no less profitable. And there's the rub. It's all about the money.

Which serendipitously brings us to the author Han Han, who I'm informed will be writing for the New York Times as a columnist in the near future. Han has recently been brandishing his iPad at Baidu, furiously criticizing the company's founder, Robin Li, for sharing digital information at the expense of poor writers like himself.

Some will say this is all very laudable and it certainly is in line with officialdom which, since China's accession to the World Trade Organization, has been clamping down on copyright infringement, from vendors selling fake brand-name goods at Silk Street Market, to the closure of unregistered DVD shops, to checking government offices use registered software.