Doubting to shuō

I haven’t written about Tudou.com sooner because I figured it was old news, but at the Beer Factory meet-up, David, Todd, and some other Taiwan bloggers told me they hadn’t heard of Tudou.com. I guess the Taiwan websphere and the mainland websphere really are cut off from each other. So, here it is: Tudou is a copy of YouTube done Chinese-style. YouTube has plenty of copyrighted materials, but there’s at least the appearance that they don’t allow them. Tudou, on the other hand has things you’d never see on YouTube- things like all the Star Wars movies streamed back-to-back, Friends episodes, and a ton of other movies and TV programs. It’s amazing. It’s like Tudou has no fear of Hollywood, whatsoever.

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Notes:
[1] 土豆网 (tu2dou4 wang3) means “Potato net”
[2] You vote up videos by clicking on the orange button with 挖 (wa1), which means “dig”. Remind you of anything?

Recently, one of Michael Turton’s (see my links on the right) friends from Taizhong emailed me and asked me for input on curriculum design for a private middle school’s English program. I answered his questions as best I could, and tried to tell him a bit about different activities I’ve found useful. It was a little difficult to describe them over the phone and so he asked if I could show him some of our curriculum materials. I was all for it, but I had to ask my boss first. His reaction?

Him: Oh, sure. Yeah, I care about beating the other schools, but I care more about improving the level of education for as many Taiwanese kids as possible. That’s why I’m helping X high school, that swiped our curriculum just across town.

Me: What!!? What do you mean? Somebody copied it?
Him: Yeah, the’ve got the whole thing photocopied. They aren’t teaching it properly, though.
Me: So… uh… you’re going to help them “copy us properly”?
Him: Yeah, man. We’re talking about the education of thousands of kids!

I just don’t know how to take that. It’s such a shock after my last school, which cancelled my contract over an “all your brain is belong to us” IP clause I refused to sign. I love his ideals, but will the market reward him?