China may require manufacturers to disclose software code

[Jeff Kleist]

As if there isn't enough piracy in China already, now even the government is going to facilitate it.

The Chinese government has enabled piracy there for years, only making cursory, symbolic busts. The Chinese triads, the same ones that finance certain Blu-related software packages, use bootlegs to launder, and double their money from much more serious crimes like drugs, arms dealing, prostitution, extortion etc.

The timing of this is not a coincidence with the introduction of CBHD. They know that the BDA and the CEs will never let their people near the delicate pieces of Blu-ray, specifically because they will make it back to a certain company within a week, and because Chinese companies will start making unlicensed players with impunity. Therefore, "real" Blu-ray players willl not be sold on the mainland, and the government's new format (third time's the charm for a proprietary video format) will have a chance to take over.

In reality, the Chinese public will do what they've always done, go for bootlegs of whatever the most popular format is. Personally I expect 720p AVCHD on a DVD-9 capable players to become the norm there for the common man. The best anti-piracy tool they have is the fact that the Chinese own this lock stock and barrel. Screw the government out of royalties and you're a literal dead man, which is why they'll stick to the AVC discs they've been cranking out

WB has pledged their support to the format, but it probably begins and ends with how easily they can repurpose their HD DVD stuff (the Shinco player is essentially a Toshiba HDA3 by all accounts, sans HD DVD playback, and CBHD purchased the physical disc format from Toshiba, and their "AVS" codec is changed just enough from foreign tech like MPEG-4 that they're pretty sure they can avoid paying royalties.

I wonder if such rules wouldn't be against international copy right laws. Can a government force a company that has a legal patent on certain intellectual property (in this case: software) to divulge that information?

Sure. The government of any country regulates what can be sold there, and the conditions under which that can happen. It's up to the manufacturer to decide whether those conditions are tolerable or not.