The sincerest form of flattery

In many Asian countries, perhaps all, imitation products are available wherever you look. Whether it’s fake Louis Vuitton handbags (of which Taiwan is cited in this book as having five different grades, some more expensive than the originals), Gucci shirts or Adidas running shoes, pirated Harry Potter books, DVDs or CDs, all are more or less openly on sale on every hand. At first glance, and to some extent in the final analysis too if Marcus Boon’s In Praise of Copying is to be believed, this is not altogether a bad thing. The rich nations, whose creations it is that are almost invariably being copied, may howl in protest, and demand promises to clean up the infamous trade at high-level intergovernmental meetings, but at street level, especially where there are tourists in evidence, things carry on to almost everyone’s satisfaction. The tourists are delighted by the low prices, the traders are making good money, and the police are pocketing their bribes and looking the other way. Once a month everyone shuts up shop for 10 minutes while the authorities slowly pace the streets, then write reports saying they’ve seen no counterfeit goods being sold in their area, reports that are then presumably forwarded to the Western nations as proof that the Asian governments’ anti-piracy measures are indeed taking effect. Meanwhile, copyright warnings are prominently displayed even on the duplicated goods themselves (“violations will be prosecuted according to the civil law and the penal code”). But what copyright precisely is, and who decides who it is that has the exclusive right to make copies, is one of the many questions this book attempts to answer.