Ms. Zhou from Zhejiang bought books online for her children to read, but found that the paper was rough and the printing was blurry, and the children were dizzy after reading them for a long time. Parents reported to the Ministry of Culture, and as a result, a huge counterfeiting and selling gang was launched. A few days ago, after the trial of the Nanhu District People's Court of Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province, a number of people involved in this extraordinarily serious case of infringing on the copyright of children's books were sentenced.
Buying books for children to read is supposed to enrich children's spiritual world, but because of pirated books, children are "trapped". In reality, many people's understanding of the harm of pirated books only stays at the economic order to which copyright is attached, such as infringing on the copyrights of relevant authors and publishers, disrupting the book market, and the reading experience caused by the poor quality of pirated books. In fact, the harm of pirated books is far more than that, and quality problems will also bring a series of real hazards that affect the physical and mental health of readers.
Reading is a healthy and happy thing, but the existence of pirated books may in turn seriously affect children's physical health and physical and mental growth. To protect children's "reading safety", it is necessary to take a multi-pronged approach to standardize and rectify the production, supply and sales of books.
Books are a special commodity in the market, and the core of their value lies in the spiritual and cultural content attached to the carrier of books, that is, the patterns, words and other forms printed on them. In addition, since books need to be in direct contact with the human body for a long time during use, the materials and quality of books should be strictly controlled.
Judging from the characteristics of books and the current status of pirated books, pirated books include at least the following three significant harms: first, infringement of the economic interests of legitimate copyright holders; the second is to disrupt the normal order of the book market; Third, it endangers the physical and mental health of readers and infringes on the right to health of others. The first two harms are well known to society, but they are ignored by consumers in terms of health hazards, and in fact, pirated books are much more harmful to health than to the economy and order. For example, the errors and omissions of the content and the poor printing quality mislead the children's correct cognition and aesthetic taste, and the problem of the material directly damages the reader's health.
As early as 2013, a solid substance test report commissioned by the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences and the Environmental Quality Inspection Center of Tsinghua University showed that some pirated books contained 100 times more lead than similar genuine books. Hexavalent chromium, which is classified as a Class I carcinogen, is basically not detected in genuine books, while hexavalent chromium is generally detected in pirated books. At the same time, the formaldehyde of pirated books generally exceeds the standard, which is also one of the reasons why children are dizzy when reading. On the Internet, it is not uncommon for pirated book readers to experience dizziness, nausea and vomiting while reading books.
Unfortunately, the only advantage of pirated books in the market - cheapness has allowed the influence of pirated books to achieve continuous output and sweep the major e-commerce platforms. Taking the pirated book gang that Ms. Zhou bought in this case as an example, the revenue from the sales of pirated books by the gang was at least 16 million yuan, and according to its pricing, the sales volume was as high as more than 300,000 copies, and the more than 100,000 copies seized were negligible compared to the number of copies sold. With such a powerful "firepower" of a gang, it is conceivable that the number of pirated books entering the hands of readers nationwide must be an eye-popping figure. What's even more heart-wrenching is that most of them have entered the market for children's books and subject tutorials, becoming children's books.
Over the years, experts have put forward a series of suggestions on platform responsibility, publisher rights protection, and legal punishment for rectifying pirated books, but the results have not been effective. The author believes that it is necessary to grasp three points: first, publishers should reduce the hardcover of children's books and design more paperbacks to reduce the cost of books; The second is to grasp a key link, that is, in addition to the store qualifications, the e-commerce platform should also require the store to provide a legal purchase channel certificate to ensure that every book on the shelves can be traced; The third is to adjust the thinking of law enforcement, increase the crackdown on the production and sale of pirated books, increase the cost of violating the law, and protect the reading safety of children.
The author is the director of the library of Xichang National Preschool Normal College).
China Education Daily, 2024-01-11, 2nd edition
Author: Liao Dekai.