Re: Copyright in China

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

When the information is available for free, there is less incentive to
copy and resell, particularly for commercial purposes.

If there is enough free information available, there will be very little
incentive for piracy, period.  When the highest quality copy of an article
is already free, no one is going to go looking for a reduced price.

Considering the ease with which text can be scanned and OCR'd, it seems
more likely that this will happen with restricted-access information.  
Easier to sell - and harder for the potential customer to check the
reliability of the information.

As Jean-Claude points out, it should not be difficult to design systems to
ensure and compare the integrity of documents.  It is easier to do this
with open access, as it is not necessary to get past authentication
mechanisms in order to make the comparison.

As for the book from China, based on the described changes, I'm wondering
if this is truly piracy, or a parody - which, with a change in title,
might have been perfectly legal in the U.S.?

best,

Heather Morrison