Raid sparks debate on pirating of textbooks

"Everybody knows that this phenomenon has existed for years in Taiwan," Deng said. "Why don't prosecutors investigate piracy by professors?"

According to Taiwan's Copyright Law (著作權法), it is legal to photocopy parts of a book without the authorization of the author. But the law is still vague.

Chen Ming-pang (陳明邦), the director-general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Intellectual Property Office (智慧財產局), said that students should be more careful about their photocopying.

"Technically, duplicating someone else's intellectual work without their authorization has violated the Copyright Law already," he said. "The motivation itself is wrong."

A librarian at National Taiwan University (NTU, 國立台灣大學) said that the school has posted notes reminding students not to pirate other people's work at photocopiers and throughout the library.

The note reads, "Please respect the copyright of authors and do not photocopy more than 30 percent of the original work."

Huang Mu-hsuan (黃慕萱), director of NTU's Library Department, said that people's attitude toward the law is the key.

"Students are very smart," Huang said. "I once discovered that a student copied the first two chapters of a book one day, another two chapters the next day and finally finished copying the entire book a few days later. Librarians did not catch him because he copied less than 30 percent of the original work each time he came to the library."

"If a person doesn't have the heart to obey the law and respect copyrights, piracy will still exist no matter what," she added.

Lin Tsung-yao (林聰耀), who owns a copy shop near Tamkang University (淡江大學), said that most copy-shop owners would not want to risk providing illegal services for students.

"It's just not worth it," he said. "During the economic slowdown, our business was slowing down, too," he said.

"Everybody knows it's illegal. Nobody would risk his neck to pirate books for students for only a few extra bucks."

Meanwhile, Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) said that the Executive Yuan (行政院) has declared this year the "Year of Intellectual Property Protection."

Chen hoped that in addition to the Taichung District Prosecutors' Office, other local district pro-secutors' offices can carry out a strict crackdown against piracy to get rid of Taiwan's shameful title as "The Kingdom of Piracy."

"Of course I understand it costs a lot to buy books," he said. "However, I don't understand why today's college kids pay lots of money for beautiful cars, motorcycles, scooters or cellular phones, but they won't pay for their books. How come?"

Chen added that students shouldn't make excuses for piracy.

"I don't think that `it's too expensive to buy those books' is a good reason for them to pirate other people's work. It's just an excuse.

"You have to pay for knowledge," he said.