The Agency Against Corruption yesterday arrested two National Palace Museum employees on suspicion they stole digital images of national treasures and sold them to Chinese companies.
The agency said research staff member Chen Yao-tung (陳耀東) and his assistant, surnamed Yeh (葉), had joined a program at the museum to produce digital images of artifacts through advanced digital photography.
Both are suspected of copying images of the Tibetan-language gilt manuscript the Dragon Sutra (龍藏經), the Yongle Encyclopedia (or Yongle Canon, 永樂大典), a volume of paintings from the Song Dynasty and other items, and allegedly selling the digital copies to Chinese companies via a front company that Chen established in Taiwan.
Photo: Wang Wen-lin, Taipei Times
The agency said Chinese companies had sold unauthorized prints of those digital images.
Agency officials yesterday raided Chen’s and Yeh’s offices at the museum, as well as their houses and companies they own.
The agency said the two would be charged with corruption and contravening the Copyright Act (著作權法).
The museum said the Dragon Sutra manuscript, also known as the Tripitaka in Manchu, was completed more than three centuries ago during the eighth year of the reign of Qing Emperor Kangxi (1669). Written in gilt standard Tibetan script on both sides of the paper, the massive manuscript contains 108 sets comprising about 100,000 pages. The manuscript contains 1,100 Buddhist sutras.
The agency said the museum spent seven years producing images of the Dragon Sutra and had authorized a company to begin making copies in January 2008, selling them for NT$1.88 million (US$60,000). The firm issued 500 copies of the manuscript in January.
The agency said the reproduced Dragon Sutra has attracted the interest of a number of Buddhists and entrepreneurs,
The agency said a Chinese company has sold fake copies of the Dragon Sutra for about NT$100,000.
The Yongle Encyclopedia is a Chinese compilation commissioned by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in 1403 and completed in 1408. It was the world’s earliest and largest general encyclopedia.
Additional reporting by AP
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