CHINA: Harry Potter loses battle against Chinese piracy

Harry Potter's magic can't beat Chinese fake products. Shortly after the release of the latest book in the series, fakes can be found for less than five U.S. dollars each in Beijing. Harry Potter might possess the powers to vanquish evil wizards -- but not Chinese pirates. Days after the English-language copies of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" were released in China, fake copies can be found on almost every street corner. This J.K. Rowling's latest and last novel in her super-selling series, costs about 180RMB a copy, which is about 23.5 U.S. Dollars. But a fake copy costs less than five dollars. But pirated versions don't only cater for English readers -- Chinese students have worked their magic on producing a translated version of the novel, in their home language, translating the latest installment within hours of release of the English version, according to state media on Thursday (August 16). The official Chinese version was scheduled to hit book shelves in China late in October but fans can already download dozens of translations of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". The first full-length translated version is said to have appeared on the Internet on July 21, the day of the book's global release. Cheng Yongshun, director of the Beijing Intellectual Property Rights, said piracy has a lot to do with censorship in China. "China has long treated television programmes and films as a kind of ideology rather than literature. It's a question of how we look at them. Now we know that films are regarded as an industry in the U.S., while we regard them as related to ideology," Cheng said. Cheng said piracy could not be wiped out overnight. "Intellectual property is a game of the rich. The richer a country is, the more attention it pays to intellectual property. There is no intellectual property in poor countries. The poor don't talk about intellectual property. And the whole thing proves that China is on the process from poverty to richness," Cheng said. Everything from pirated movies to designer handbags are widely available in China, which has a reputation for its poor protection of intellectual property rights. Liao Yong, a 22-year-old university student in Beijing said his life was filled with the temptation to buy fakes. "That's inevitable against the bigger backdrop. Authentic publications are very expensive. As students, we can hardly afford them. For example, if I really like certain movies, I have to download them from the Internet. The authorized copies cost 20 to 30 yuan each which I can't afford," Liao said. In 2002, an entirely fake Harry Potter book, with a fake name and storyline, entitled "Harry Potter and Leopard Walk Up To Dragon", appeared in China. Chinese Web sites published reports and photographs before the release of the actual book, which they said may contain the ending to the eagerly awaited seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter book series. China has promised to wipe out pirate producers who have become a sore point in trade ties with the United States and Europe. But the piles of freshly printed Potter were a reminder of how far Beijing is from realising that pledge. U.S. copyright industry companies claim bootleggers cost them $2.6 billion (U.S. dollars) in sales in China in 2005. On Chinese streets, pirate DVDs can cost as little as one U.S. dollar, much less than legitimate copies sold in wealthy countries. ENDS.

ITN Source | August 20, 2007

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