Questions on the Journalist Interview “The Computer Bug”
⑴ How do you tell that this top IT thief has a big ego from the journalist’s opening remarks?
The ego of the IT chief is revealed from his demeaning description of a government. He explains that what a person gets from working for the government is “chicken feed”. The IT chief justifies his decision of not specializing. The top IT thief thinks highly of himself. He says that it costs one hundred Yuan to get his services for an hour. He says that other people cannot break a program code even if given Ten thousand hours yet he could do it.
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⑵How does he justify his software piracy? What makes him think that he is bullet-proof against foreigners’ charge of “intellectual property infringement?
He justifies his software piracy by stating that it’s actually the “foreigners” who owe the Chinese in copyright fees because the Chinese invented magnetism, movable type, and the theory of yin and yang, his idea being that Westerners actually owe more to the Chinese in copyright fees for those “items” than the Chinese owe to the Westerners for infringing on intellectual property rights.
He believes he is bullet-proof against foreigners’ charge of intellectual property infringement because 1) the sanctions against China only punish the state, not the individual piraters; 2) the cops and the government don’t really care about the piracy raids conducted to get pirated software. The raids are only done because the government is looking to appease the “Yankee devils.” He states that he only got raided because the United States-Sino intellectual property talks led to the “Yankees” needing “some face.”
⑶What does he reveal about the part that Chinese officials play in computer piracy?
He reveals that the Chinese government pirates software and thus breaks the law. He states that the government is the only group of people that can “get away with it” (“it” being pirating really lever software). He also reveals that the Chinese government makes “a heap” from pirating, because they pirate really clever software.
⑷How do you feel about the “generation gap” between him and his parents in terms of their attitudes towards piracy? What do you say about his attitudes towards “a moral society”? Write a few lines about that.
His parents’ attitudes about piracy aren’t specifically mentioned. What is mentioned is how his father was blown away by how much money he could make overnight and how his father hated him for being able to make that type of money easily. I feel that the “generation gap” mirrors what happened to our society in that same time period; people of my grandfather’s generation are angry at easy money because they grew up during the Great Depression and so skimped and saved their entire lives because of the hardships they suffered during the Great Depression. For example, I’m sure my grandpa would be blown away by knowing how much money it’s possible to make practically overnight in Silicon Valley.
In some ways, our society is moral but he doesn’t believe so. He believes that everyone is immoral. According to him, no one is clean. There is only a difference between those who can play the game and those who cannot. He’s wrong to think that this isn’t a moral society, however, because in some ways it is although in many ways it is immoral.
