Option analysis & memo -- Yulong Deng

Policy Question:

What actions, if any, should the National Copyright Administration of the P.R.C. take to deal with the negative impact that e-books have on the copyrights protection in China?

Client:

The National Copyright Administration of the P.R.C. is an organization which have the power to make or revise the related laws on the copyrights protection, it has the duties of supervising the use of copyrights and deal with the violations. [1]

Background: 

As technology develops rapidly, mobile devices are getting smaller and smaller, the Internet is connecting wider and wider, and they have changed many ways of living. One big and important change is the appearance of e-books. Looking back to the human’s history, reading is the most direct way we learn knowledge and exchange thoughts. And now e-books have changed people’s understanding of books. E-books can be downloaded whenever there is network connection and can be read on almost all mobile devices now. In America the e-books have been quite popular and normal these years, and Amazon, the biggest e-books seller has achieved big success in this area. While in China, the big copyright problems make e-books quite difficult to be popular in China. The current copyright policy still focused most on the real books, therefore we really need to do something to promote the e-books development in China.

Policy Options:

1. Keep status quo. 

China has a application system of copyrights about real books. The current policy is that when the infringements of copyrights are reported, if it is true, the violators are to be fined 3 times amount of the illegal income, if the illegal income can not be calculated, they will be fined no more than 100,000 RMB. Keep on this policy and deal with those infringements.  

Advantages:

— Easy to execute.

— The actions of copyright infringement will be punished.

— When writers find their works are used without permission, they know where they can defense their rights.

Disadvantages:

— It has no clear regulations of the copyrights of e-books, which may let some people take advantage of this and make money which should have been illegal.

— The current policy can only address the appearances of infringements, it is not effective to prevent the potential situations. 

— The penalty seems not heavy enough to make people not do the infringement.

— Normal people still don’t have a clear awareness of the importance of copyright protection, especially on the e-books. 

2. Establish a separate organization which specify in supervising and regulating the copyrights related to electronic versions on the Internet.

As the e-books will lead to a very big market in the future, we need a separate organization which belongs to the National Copyright Administration of the P.R.C., but it will specify the regulations of e-books and collect related people who can carry out the standard of copyrights of e-books. It will carry out the related issue on law which specially regulate the use of e-books copyrights and punish the appearance of piratic e-books. Maybe it will develop a electronic form of copyrights which can be inserted into the e-books and manage them, and the e-books downloaded from the internet without electronic copyrights will not be allowed to be open on the reading apps. 

Advantages: 

— The new organization will only supervise and regulate copyrights on the electronic books, the problems will be found more quickly and solved more efficiently as people who worked for it have related knowledge and technology.

— Writers will feel safer about their products or books posted on the Internet, and they will be motivated to compose more good works as they can really get the reward they deserve to.

— As it will make the market more formal and safer, it will provide a better atmosphere for the e-books industry. In the future, the e-books industry will create an increase on the whole culture industry.

— It will create a fairer system for both real book writers and the e-book writers. 

Disadvantages:

— It need a lot of money to start up and hire related people who can manage the related problems they will face. 

— The standard need a long time to develop to make sure it is close to flawless and equal to everyone. 

3. Introduce the importance of copyrights of e-books to the education system, establish a strong awareness of copyrights protection when people are still children.

I think we can introduce the related knowledge and the importance of copyrights to the children. The reason why I focused on children is that in China people have got used to getting things from Internet for free since they were children. I have this feeling, because even now I still want to get what I want on the Internet for free. When I was a child, all friends around me rarely buy video games or e-books on the Internet, instead we often search for the “free version” and we “ share” to each other. And of course these “free version” give no payback to the writer or the producer. I really hope in the future China will be a country like America that people themselves are very careful on the issue of copyright protection. Therefore it seems like it is not a direct way but a long-term way to solve my question, but I think it is a way to change our bad roots. When people are used to the way of buying these things to respect the writer from their hearts, the e-books without copyrights or those piratic versions will disappear little by little. 

Advantages:

— Children can form the awareness and of e-books copyrights and its protection problems when they are small, and they will regard them as normal things in the future. Change the thoughts of getting “Free versions”.

— It can solve some deep problems or change our “bad roots” about the e-books copyright as China currently doesn’t have a good atmosphere.

— Children will not only be aware of the importance of e-books copyrights protection, but will also pay attention to the other copyrights problems.

Disadvantages:

— It will need quite a long time to see the effect.

— It also needs the government to put into a lot of money and manpower.

Options	Efficiency	Effectiveness	Equity	Ease of political acceptability
Status quo	-	-	0	+
option2	+	+	+	+
option3	-	+	+	?

Resources:

[1] http://baike.baidu.com/view/1933197.htm?fromtitle=%E5%9B%BD%E5%AE%B6%E7%89%88%E6%9D%83%E5%B1%80&fromid=1090440&type=syn

[2]    http://www.ccopyright.com.cn/cms/ArticleServlet?articleID=9682