The Prosecution and Police Uncovered Students Making Pirated Copies of Textbooks by Storing Electronic Files onto Their Personal USB Flash Drives.

Six groups of prosecutors and police officers conducted simultaneously on-site investigations for collecting evidences at photocopying stores, which are located near university campuses in Taichung City/County, that make photocopies for students.  Evidences revealed that some of the stores directly linked computers to the photocopying machines so students can directly make copies of books from their USB and those stores are free from any legal consequences.  After yesterday’s investigations, Chen and other four perpetrators were prosecuted for violation of the Copyright Act.

With enforcement agencies’ efforts to initiate raid actions in the past years and massive propaganda campaign on campus, there has been a decreasing trend for making illegal photocopying.  However, it was uncovered that many university students have abandoned the traditional means of copying -- bringing textbook to the photocopying stores and making copies page by page.  Students have adopted new photocopying method by downloading the complete electronic files of foreign-language books/textbooks via Internet onto their personal flash drives.  Students will then either exchange these stored electronic files among themselves or bring their personal flash drives to photocopying stores for printing copies of foreign-language books efficiently by inserting the flash drives into the USB port of computer which links directly to the copiers at the stores.

The police noted that in order to evade the legal consequences, photocopying store owners will entrust students to operate the computers on their own for printing copies of books and store owners will bind the copied books and charge students according to the number of pages copied as indicated by the automatic counting machine.  (2009.09)
/DC