MCLC: stealing books for the poor

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: martin winter (dujuan99 at gmail.com)
Subject: stealing books for the poor
***********************************************************

Source: NY Times (3/13/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/opinion/yu-stealing-books-for-the-poor.ht
ml

Op-Ed Guest Columnist
Stealing Books for the Poor
By YU HUA

Eight years ago, a friend of mine had a book published, only to find
almost immediately that it could be downloaded free on the Internet. He
pointed this out to the General Administration of Press and Publication,
the government agency that regulates news organizations and publishing
houses in China, and soon the agency wrote back, asking for the names of
the bootleg providers. He supplied three Web addresses, but months later
it was still possible to download his book on those same sites. Years
passed, and nothing changed.

All my works — my novels, essays and stories — can be downloaded free. My
most recent book, “China in Ten Words,” which cannot be published in
mainland China because of the climate of censorship, was accessible online
here as soon as it was released in Taiwan. Pirated hard copies of books
circulate just as openly — my last novel, “Brothers,” had been on sale in
bookstores for only a few days when a copycat edition appeared in sidewalk
stalls outside my house.

The power to enforce laws against theft of intellectual property rests
with local culture and public security bureaus. But the culture bureaus’
inspection teams have a broad mandate, covering everything from Internet
cafes and video-game emporiums to nightclubs and live arts performances;
to them, pirated books are small potatoes. The public security bureaus,
for their part, are too busy handling criminal cases and economic crimes
to have time for pirated books. Sometimes we see these agencies join
forces to smash book piracy rings, but that happens so infrequently that
it has next to no effect on the problem.

After China joined the World Trade Organization, in 2001, it began to
crack down on commercial presses that printed pirated books. But the
crackdown left an important loophole, as pirating simply gravitated to two
locations particularly resistant to enforcement: prisons and former
Communist base areas.

Prisons, being under the purview of the judiciary, are exempt from the
oversight of the culture bureaus’ inspectors. Even the public security
bureaus cannot readily gain entrance. These presses, staffed by inmates
who get only a small allowance for their labors, have become the most
profitable in China.

Old revolutionary base areas that were Communist Party strongholds before
1949, when the People’s Republic of China was founded, likewise enjoy a
special status. They are typically in remote areas of poor provinces, like
Shaanxi and Jiangxi. Several years ago, a publisher told me that he had
traced pirated copies of his company’s books back to a plant in a former
base area. Members of his staff, along with cultural inspectors and police
officers, made a long journey to the plant, but soon found themselves
outnumbered by local police officers. The top county administrator also
arrived on the scene. “Have you no decency?” he asked them. The presses,
he said, were a cash cow for the poverty-stricken region. The visitors
were forced to retreat.

The West constantly, and often justly, criticizes the Chinese government
for sitting on its hands as movies, songs, books and luxury goods are
counterfeited and sold. But a more apt metaphor might be to say that its
hands are tied. In the West, piracy is a matter of intellectual property —
copyright, patents and trademarks — but in China, the issue is not just
legal, but social.

Why are fake goods everywhere? The administrator suggested part of the
reason: businesses producing pirated and knockoff goods have intricate
connections to local governments and officials. These enterprises are,
plainly, major sources of tax revenue; less visibly, some officials have
an economic stake in them.

But the most basic reason, in my view, is the huge demand for pirated and
knockoff products. After more than 30 years of rapid economic development
that made China the world’s second largest economy, there are still more
than 100 million Chinese, mostly peasants, who make less than $1 a day.

Food and housing prices have been rising, creating an enormous market for
counterfeit items among those without money. They can’t afford genuine,
guaranteed-quality products and can buy only cheap, counterfeit goods.
They live surrounded by contaminated rice, adulterated milk powder,
tainted vegetables, spoiled ham, unsafe toys, even fake eggs. Day after
day, year after year, they consume substandard food and rely on defective
supplies. Reading offers a means to improve their condition, and low-cost,
pirated books are the only ones they can afford.

Years ago, in a talk at a university, I said: “I am opposed to
counterfeiting in all forms, but so long as poverty is a huge problem in
China, I think it’s only proper that my books be pirated. I make enough to
support my family from the regular sales of my books.” Some of my fellow
writers disagree, but I still believe it.

Yu Hua 
<http://www.randomhouse.com/author/42988/yu-hua?sort=best_13wk_3month>,
the author of “To Live”
<http://www.randomhouse.com/book/83706/to-live-by-yu-hua> and three other
novels, is a guest columnist.

This column was translated by Allan H. Barr
<https://my.pomona.edu/ICS/Academics/Academics_Homepage.jnz?portlet=Faculty
_Profiles_and_Expert_Guide&screen=Results&screenType=next&id=75> from the
Chinese.