Pirated textbooks mislead students, Xinhua Bookstore employee arrested

[4] Compiled from: Red Star News
 
On September 21, the Yilong police in Nanchong City, Sichuan Province, stated that local police recently successfully dismantled a criminal chain involved in selling stolen printing templates, unauthorized printing, and illegally selling pirated textbooks. They arrested 15 suspects, pursued one person online, and confiscated more than 2.8 million pirated primary and secondary school textbooks, with the case amount reaching as high as 140 million yuan.

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Case review
In order to let her child preview the courses for the new semester, Ms. Liu from Yilong County, Nanchong City, Sichuan Province, purchased the textbooks for the next semester online. She found that compared with the textbooks borrowed from the school, the online-purchased textbooks were not only of poor quality but also had incorrect page numbers for relevant knowledge points. Afterwards, Ms. Liu suspected that she had bought pirated textbooks and reported the situation to the relevant authorities.
 
After receiving leads forwarded by the relevant departments, the Yilong County Public Security Bureau immediately set up a special task force to file a case and conduct an investigation. By sorting out the sales network of the involved pirated textbooks, the police discovered a total of five similar online stores on relevant e-commerce platforms. Although their registration information differed, these five online stores all had certain transactional relationships.
 
Shockingly, an employee of a Xinhua Bookstore in a certain area of Henan was also implicated and arrested. He purchased textbook printing templates that the employee of a certain Henan printing company had copied without authorization, and then handed the templates to a salesperson of a printing company to arrange for workers to secretly print them, and then resold them to downstream buyers for profit…
 
 
《 Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China 》
Article 217: Crime of Infringing Copyright
For profit, reproducing and distributing the works of others such as writings, audiovisual works, and computer software without the permission of the copyright owner, publishing books for which others enjoy exclusive publishing rights, reproducing and distributing audiovisual products made by others without the maker's permission, producing or exhibiting artworks falsely attributed to others, and acts where the illegal gains are relatively large or there are other serious circumstances.
 
 
Article 225: Crime of Illegal Business Operations
Whoever, in violation of state regulations, commits any of the following illegal business operations, disrupting market order, shall, if the circumstances are serious, be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years or criminal detention, and shall also, or shall only, be fined not less than one time but not more than five times the illegal gains; if the circumstances are especially serious, be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years, and shall also be fined not less than one time but not more than five times the illegal gains or have property confiscated:
(1) Engaging in the sale of goods that are monopolized or subject to restricted trading under laws or administrative regulations without permission;
(2) Buying or selling import or export licenses, certificates of origin for import or export, or other business licenses or approval documents as stipulated by laws or administrative regulations;
(3) Illegally engaging in securities, futures, or insurance business without approval from the relevant state authorities, or illegally engaging in fund payment and settlement business;
(4) Other illegal business operations that seriously disrupt market order.
 
 
[1] The author's perspective
Pirated textbooks have been persistently difficult to stop, and poor-quality printing and paper can potentially cause some harm to children's health. On the other hand, pirated textbooks often have missing or incorrect pages, and sometimes even contain content that is not in the original version, which affects children's learning. Therefore, parents must choose official channels to purchase textbooks and should not buy pirated textbooks from small vendors or hawkers for the sake of convenience or cheap prices.
 
For manufacturers and companies of genuine textbooks, it is important to protect their intellectual property, add anti-counterfeiting marks to genuine textbooks, and immediately report any pirated textbooks once discovered, in order to maintain a healthy market economy.