In a big time PR fail, the latest Chinese space launch was televised to the strains of "America the Beautiful" by the Chinese press. [video=youtube;lbWCgUDzT3Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbWCgUDzT3Y[/video] Somebody is about to lose their job, if not their ass, LOL... Seriously, something like this really speaks to the atmosphere of how the PRC treats intellectual property. I suspect that some television producer there, working at the state own TV company, chose the music because it sounded beautiful and majestically fitting for the launch. However, since even the Chinese government doesn't really respect intellectual property, no background check was ever performed as to the provenance of the score (a practice that is relatively commonplace in the west, mainly to prevent copyright law suits). Had this been done, it would have been easily discovered that this was in fact a well known patriotic national song of the United States a century old. In this case though, I don't think PRC television would be worried about law suits however. They're too busy wiping egg off their face after embarrassing all of the People's Republic; could you imagine the US launching the Space Shuttle to March of The Volunteer's? LOL... [video=youtube;qcLBCnX8fM0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcLBCnX8fM0[/video]
This was huge for them but of course someone put on that song, what were that person thinking and why didn't anyone notice in time...
Any American would almost automatically know America the Beautiful and recognize it as easily as say, Happy Birthday To You. This is because as children, we grew up with this song being sung since grade school. But that's a problem for people from other parts of the world. Most of them have never heard the music associated with it, and if they did, do not know the historical significance of the song. The original was a patriotic poem written in the 1890's, and then used as lyrics when it was paired with music in 1910. So the song itself it out of copyright, per se. However the political significance cannot be dismissed as easily. For the Chinese space program, whom many critics say had slavishly copied American technique and design, this is just another unfortunate public "acknowledgment" that the PRC's space know how is really just previous American know how. It would be interesting to see what, if anything, the Chinese press would say about this. My guess would be that they will say nothing; ie not call any further attention to the mistake, and hope that the least that know about it means the quicker it will be forgotten.
So.. they revealed that China is using US's programs to reproduce to their citizen? Or did they just choose the wrong song to use cause they thought it sounded good for their video..?
The latter. The PRC is loathe to ever admit that they ever copied anything from the USA, even though just about everything there had some sort of pirate origin. No, in this case, there was no admission of any kind, but critics (US and Chinese) of the Chinese space program have long suspected that most of the technology used in the PRC launches were lifted almost directly from NASA's files. Of course there is no "proof" of this, but supposedly (from an article I read years ago, can't find a link right now) there are so many similarities that some would say goes beyond coincidence. China continues to deny ever using US technology and insists it's space program is all home grown. At any rate, like I had stated earlier, I personally suspect that a low level CCTV worker was looking for some nice inspiration music to go with the video but unknowingly picked America the Beautiful because it sounded nice. I'm sure the tech probably played it a few times and had the whole project vetted by a supervisor or two before final approval for airing. But of course, his next level bosses probably didn't know the song any better either. In the US and other western countries, before any media outlet broadcasts music, they research the title scrupulously and obtain permission to air the tune lest they be charged with copyright infringement. Again, I suspect that because most media outlets in the PRC do not routinely respect intellectual property of others, they weren't worried about who the song actually belonged to, because frankly, they don't care. Thus, they failed to perform any background checks on the music. In this case, it turned out to be an American patriotic song, which is embarrassing enough. To make matters even worse, it was with the PRC's space program; considering the background of stinging copycat rumors, it became even more ironic.
