Professors should opt for legally downloadable textbooks where possible, as they help students on a tight budget and offer greater flexibility.
The Taipei-based Chinese Oral and Literary Copyright Intermediary Association (中華語文著作權仲介協會) has reportedly signed a contract with the Tainan Reprographics Guild (台南市影印商業同業公會) to allow foreign-language books to be photocopied as long as an authorization fee is paid and the number of pages copied does not exceed 20 percent of the book.
Every summer, the Taiwan Book Publishers Association (台灣國際圖書業交流協會), composed of 30 publishers, issues an official letter to presidents of domestic colleges and universities and sends copies to the Ministry of Education and the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) calling for the use of copyrighted textbooks. In turn, the office issues a letter requesting that the Ministry of Economic Affairs demand colleges and universities instruct students to use copyrighted books.
Preposterously, college and university presidents forward this letter from a commercial pressure group to every teacher and the IPO threatens students to make them comply.
Students have no choice but to give in to the pressure.
On April 11, 2001, prosecutors and police raided a dormitory at National Cheng Kung University, seizing 14 computers and accusing students of illegally downloading and trading MP3 music files. A few days later, the education ministry mediated and students expressed regret for their wrongdoing.
But illicit downloading continued.
In the fall of 2003, two US students at Swarthmore College posted on the school’s network internal memorandums from Diebold as reference for a discussion on electronic voting machines. The college removed the documents from the Web site upon receiving a cease-and-desist order from Diebold, a manufacturer of online voting machines.
But Harvard University undergraduate Derek Slater re-posted the memos on his university’s Web site in support of the right to post the documents. Harvard soon received a cease-and-desist order from the company and pulled the memos. A few days later, a Harvard University legal counselor said such the posting had been fair use. Diebold made concessions, allowing the memos to be reposted to the Web site.
Two Swarthmore students and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit accusing Diebold of abusing copyright protection regulations. In 2004, the students formed a club, joining forces with more than 30 colleges to promote free culture, including the right to download and photocopy textbooks.
R. Preston McAfee, an economics professor at the California Institute of Technology, could not accept the high cost of textbooks. He began refusing to recommend books costing more than US$200 and put an economics textbook he had authored online as a free download, both in PDF and editable formats.
McAfee said his book would have had a list price approaching US$200 if he had gone the traditional publishing route. Following his promotion of open textbooks, academics have donated enough textbooks for use at university economics departments, which no longer have to accept unreasonable prices or threats.
The education ministry and the IPO should ignore letters from publishers and promote open textbooks for university courses. Better still, they could pay professors to compile and publish free textbooks. This is the best way to eradicate illegal copying.
Mao Ching-chen is an associate professor in the Department of Library and Information Science at Fu Jen Catholic University.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG
Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) led a bipartisan delegation to Taiwan in late February. During their various meetings with Taiwan’s leaders, this delegation never missed an opportunity to emphasize the strength of their cross-party consensus on issues relating to Taiwan and China. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Their instruction upon taking the reins of the committee was to preserve China issues as a last bastion of bipartisanship in an otherwise deeply divided Washington. They have largely upheld their pledge. But in doing so, they have performed the
It is well known that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) ambition is to rejuvenate the Chinese nation by unification of Taiwan, either peacefully or by force. The peaceful option has virtually gone out of the window with the last presidential elections in Taiwan. Taiwanese, especially the youth, are resolved not to be part of China. With time, this resolve has grown politically stronger. It leaves China with reunification by force as the default option. Everyone tells me how and when mighty China would invade and overpower tiny Taiwan. However, I have rarely been told that Taiwan could be defended to
It should have been Maestro’s night. It is hard to envision a film more Oscar-friendly than Bradley Cooper’s exploration of the life and loves of famed conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. It was a prestige biopic, a longtime route to acting trophies and more (see Darkest Hour, Lincoln, and Milk). The film was a music biopic, a subgenre with an even richer history of award-winning films such as Ray, Walk the Line and Bohemian Rhapsody. What is more, it was the passion project of cowriter, producer, director and actor Bradley Cooper. That is the kind of multitasking -for-his-art overachievement that Oscar
Chinese villages are being built in the disputed zone between Bhutan and China. Last month, Chinese settlers, holding photographs of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), moved into their new homes on land that was not Xi’s to give. These residents are part of the Chinese government’s resettlement program, relocating Tibetan families into the territory China claims. China shares land borders with 15 countries and sea borders with eight, and is involved in many disputes. Land disputes include the ones with Bhutan (Doklam plateau), India (Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin) and Nepal (near Dolakha and Solukhumbu districts). Maritime disputes in the South China