The Printing Pirates

An agent for a major U.S. publisher checked into book sales at Iowa State University recently and got a terrible shock. Pirated editions of U.S. books, mailed from Formosa, were arriving in such numbers that the campus post office had to use a hand cart to make deliveries. For the past two months, Iowa State students had been ordering .books at the rate of $500 a week. Catalogues offered more than 1,000 of the latest U.S. textbooks and bestsellers at only 10% to 25% of their U.S. list price. Gray's Anatomy went for $2.50 (v. a U.S. list price of $17.50); the Columbia Encyclopedia for $7.13 (v. $35); Advise and Consent for $1.62 (v.

$5-75)P:Book-pirating is neither new nor illegal to the Chinese, who subscribe to none of the international copyright conventions. It began decades ago on the mainland, produced chiefly textbooks which even today make up 80% of the volume and give the printers a patriotic rationale for their actions. Said one of Formosa's major printers last week: "Our motive is not to make money, but to provide schools here with better textbooks."

Until 1958, printing facilities were so limited on Formosa that all the printers could do was supply enough books for Formosa's 30,000 college students and send a trickle of texts throughout Southeast Asia. But then Formosan printers began to buy efficient German offset presses and modern bookbinding equipment, partly with the help of U.S. ICA loans. With modern machines, printers' wages of only $12 a month, and cheap paper, the Formosan pirates went into mass production, soon were offering a U.S. book within three months of its publication.

Alarmed at the invasion of the domestic market, U.S. publishers prodded the State Department to protest. Previous protests against the export of Formosan copies to Asian countries hai little effect. This time the State Department hinted that mutual-security funds earmarked for Nationalist China might be pared by irate Congressmen if the pirating did not cease. The hint did not go unheeded. At week's end the Nationalist government issued a stern order forbidding the export ot reprints from Formosa.

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