Copyright theft - John Gurnsey

Copyright was developed to protect the printed word. In the late twentieth century can it and does it realistically serve to protect authors of audio, video and electronic products that are the vehicles of information supply in our multi-media age? - - Systematic copyright theft forms part of a multi-billion dollar international industry, which is able to thrive partly because it is easy to overlook what is known to be theft when the original material remains intact. But what was a 'cottage industry' 30 years ago has now become much more sophisticated, so that pirate books printed in Taiwan flood the markets of West Africa, and audio tapes printed in the Far East appear in Saudi Arabia, Australasia and even Europe. The threat to publishers is alarming, and increasing. The burgeoning of the electronic information industry today makes copyright theft an urgent issue. - - John Gurnsey has reviewed all forms of copyright theft, from commercial to domestic, gathering the experiences of a wide range of organizations across book and electronic publishing. Book, electronic, database, audio, video, games and multimedia publishing are all considered along with the question of whether existing laws can effectively serve such a rapidly changing industry. - - Copyright law is an extremely complex area: this book is about the abuse of it, rather than the law itself. In helping publishing companies understand more about copyright theft, it might help them to avoid it in at least some of its forms.