The originality of ancient books is questioned

Ancient books have originality and should be fenced up to protect the fence and bring up a forum more than a month ago. Ma Jiannong, editor-in-chief of the China Bookstore Press, has yet to fight. On May 17th, the Haidian District People’s Court of Beijing Municipality invited the legal community and the publishing community to infringe on the copyrights of the “Twenty-Four Histories” and the “Clean History” of the Zhonghua Bookstore School Edition in the period of Zhonghua Bookstore’s China Study. Discuss copyright protection of ancient books. Ma Jiannong was one of the two representatives of the publishing industry who were invited to attend.

“A doctor of law remarked that 'ancient works should not be protected under the Copyright Law. What can be protected with a bunch of punctuation marks?'” Ma Jiannong was shocked to immediately read “Article 12 of the Copyright Law” on the spot. It comes out: The works that have been adapted, translated, annotated, and sorted out of existing works have their copyrights adapted, translated, annotated, and organized. Ma Jiannong said: "The law has expressly provided that how can we say that it is not protected by law?"

At the symposium, many speakers questioned the originality of the ancient book arrangement, and further doubted whether the ancient book arrangement had the need of copyright protection. However, for ancient publishing houses, this is a matter of life and death. If ancient books are not protected by the Copyright Law, the relevant works of the publishing house will be copied and used without any legal liability.

In the age of the Internet, the reproduction and dissemination of works have become easier and simpler, and a great deal of cyber piracy has also been spawned. Many ancient books have been uploaded to the Internet for downloading without authorization, and ancient books publishers have suffered.

Ma Jiannong and some experts in ancient books suggested adding “ancient books” to the definition of “literature works” in the revised version of the Copyright Law and clarifying the meaning of “originality”. “Do we need to consider the possibility of tightening the fence during the revision? a little?"

In response, Wang Ziqiang, director of the National Copyright Administration’s Department of Regulations, said that the ancient books themselves have passed the 50-year protection period and are not protected by the Copyright Law, but works based on ancient books such as punctuation, collation, annotation, and modern translation, It is original and protected. "In fact, this protection is exactly the same as the protection of contemporary works. There is no difference."

Some people in the legal profession believe that the ancient book arrangement is a very professional job. This requires a clearer definition of how to determine infringement in the legal provisions. Liu Dongjin, an associate professor at the School of Law of Peking University, suggested that: “As far as the infringement determination is concerned, the first thing to do is to follow the law, and if there is no law, it is in accordance with the relevant judicial interpretation of the Supreme Court. If it is still not there, it is in accordance with industry practice. In this case, the judge will have a dispute. According to follow."

However, Wang Ziqiang believes that the protection of copyright in ancient books is "since the relationship is simple and the protection practice is complicated." Many problems now are not in legislation but in law enforcement practice. "People's experience, knowledge is not the same, the understanding of copyright is not the same, the understanding of the originality of the work is not the same, it may come to different results. The same case for different judges, will draw different conclusions, It's not that there is a problem with the system, but when the judge judges it, there are differences in standards and concepts."

Many experts also recommend increasing the law enforcement. Because of the lack of law enforcement power, a large number of infringement and piracy are difficult to punish, and the illegal cost is very low. According to Chen Shangjun, a member of the National Ancient Books Publishing and Planning Leading Group and a professor at Fudan University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong stipulates that professors of the University will lose teaching posts if they purchase pirated books and records. The Chinese University of Hong Kong also stipulates that the library's books do not allow the whole copy to be printed. Chen Shangjun said that he has engaged in the basic literature sorting. Many of his works have been painstakingly compiled out of many ancient books, but they have been taken away for free. "We really should learn from Hong Kong to raise awareness of copyright protection."

Li Yan, general manager of Zhonghua Book Company, said that a high-quality book of ancient books came out. The sorter must pay a lot of effort and should be fully respected. We hope that the revised Copyright Law and its implementing regulations can reflect the protection of ancient books because ancient books, especially original ancient books, are related to the inheritance and promotion of our country's excellent traditional culture. The cultural heritage of the nation.