Pirated Chinese Translations of Murakami’s 1Q84 Sold Through Apple App Store
The Asahi reports that scanned copies of the Chinese translation of Haruki Murakami’s “1Q84″ have been illegally sold via the Apple’s App store:
The “1Q84″ version is identical to the Chinese translation published in Taiwan in November 2009.
In response to a query by The Asahi Shimbun, an official of the Taiwanese publishing company, China Times Publishing Co., said: “Although the contents are the translation that we published, we are not involved in any electronic versions. That is a pirated version.”
The Japanese publisher of “1Q84,” Shinchosha Publishing Co., also said it had no idea how the electronic version came about.
Murakami has so far written three parts to the “1Q84″ work. Printed copies sell in Taiwan for the equivalent of about 1,000 yen ($12) per volume. However, buyers of the pirated version can acquire all three parts for a paltry 230 yen.
Other pirated versions available in Chinese include the works of Kenzaburo Oe, who won the 1994 Nobel Literature Prize.
In all those cases, the copyright holders were unaware that the electronic works had been created.
[...]
Kensaku Fukui, a lawyer who specializes in copyright cases, commented: “The App Store has not clearly set the procedures that copyright holders should take to delete works that violate their rights. Since Apple also gains some profits from the sale of the works, there is the possibility that the company could be held responsible for violating copyright. Apple should strengthen its inspection process or clarify the methods for dealing with copyright violations.”
Many of the pirated copies have been on sale for months. If publishing companies want to deprive readers of the ability to buy digital copies of certain books, they’ll have to be more vigilant about piracy.
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