Snap-happy Shanghai students skimp on book costs

Bookshop owners in Shanghai are snapping at an influx of camera-wielding pirates taking photos of pages to avoid paying for pricey books, local media reported on Monday. Reuters reports.

"Used to people reading in their stores for hours without buying a thing, Shanghai's normally tolerant book sellers said the image thieves -- mainly students looking for reference material -- were violating intellectual property rights.

... ... A man surnamed He said books were "too expensive" for students -- albeit those prepared to shell out for cameras and camera-equipped mobile phones. "Such books... often cost thousands of yuan for one copy," He told the paper. "We do this because it won't make sense to buy the whole book as we only want the content from some of the pages.""

When cameraphones started to become popular in 2004, digital shoplifting was one of the most widely reported problems in both South Korea and Japan:

-- Korean Cell phone users using their cameras to copy textbooks

-- Digital shoplifiting in Japan, a growing concern for publishers

-- A campaign in Japan to stop people from using camera-equipped cell phones to photograph magazines

-- What 8 Japanese teenagers think about digital shoplifting

emily | 9:51 AM | Copyright Issues |
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2007/03/015274.htm