I believe that a lot of people, just like me, has benefited from the small copy shops in college. We got a much cheaper copy of the textbooks and reference books compared with the original version, we could find the copy of a book out of print or which we were not able to borrow from the library, and we could even get the copy of notes of other students.
However, students in the universities of 40 cities may not continue to enjoy these “benefits” any more from February 2016 since a special campaign against the illegal photocopying of small copy shops operating around the university campuses was launched by several governmental authorities. This campaign is aiming at stem the illegal operation without relevant approvals and/or licenses, and illegal copying without inspect the contents, providing illegal copy service by using electronic documents stored in the computers and Yunfiles and so on. This is a special campaign to protect Intellectual Property Rights after the “Two Sessions” of 2016.
Although we benefited from these small copy shops in our universities, however, it does infringe the legal rights of copyright holders and relevant presses and do harm to the Intellectual Property Rights protections sometimes. The illegal operation without necessary approvals or licenses, of course, shall be prohibited. But as to the copy of textbooks, reference books, and some books out of print, how to tell the difference between the reasonable use and infringement in this specific circumstances?
According to Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China, the reasonable use includes the use of a published work for the purpose of individual study, research or enjoyment, and the translation, or reproduction of a small number of copies of a published work where such translation or reproduction is made for the purpose of classroom teaching or scientific research and is to be used by teachers or scientific researchers, provided that such translation or reproduction is not published and distributed. And according to the Implementing Regulations of the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China, Where any person exploits, according to the relevant provisions of the
Copyright Law
, a published work that may be exploited without the authorization of the copyright owner, he shall not affect the normal exploitation of the work, nor unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the copyright owner. And the Beijing Higher Court also holds in the judgment for Wang Shen Vs. Google that, the following factors shall be considered to decide whether it is reasonable use, the purpose and nature of using the work, the nature of the work, and the nature of the used part and its proportion in the whole work, and so on. The current legal provisions just provide the purposes for reasonable use without explicit provisions about what amount constitutes “a small number”. That is to say, there is no explicit provision on the quantity about reasonable use. I think there is difference between that I borrow a book from the library and make a copy for my own study and that the copy shop makes scan copy of a book and prints it and sells it to a lot of students. And for one student, a copy may not constitute the illegal use, however, for a copy shop, make a copy for every student may constitute illegal use. Making a copy for the whole book and making several copies for a part of the book, which constitute reasonable use? As a legal professional, I am glad to assist in the IP rights protection, and at the same time, enjoy the books within the limit of reasonable use. The Law requires more practice to become more explicit at this point.