Several bookstore owners in Shanghai are unhappy about an
increase in the number of people taking photos of pages in
expensive books so they don't have to pay for them.
But the shop owners have done little, if anything, to solve the
problem themselves. It is common to see people reading in
bookstores for hours at time without being asked to buy something
or leave, and store owners have taken the same laissez-faire
attitude to photography.
The bookstore shutterbugs, who are referred to as paishuzu in
Chinese, are mainly students looking for information from reference
books.
"Such books are usually expensive, often costing thousands of
yuan for one copy. That's too much for a student," said a young man
surnamed He in Shanghai Book City. "We do this because it won't
make sense to buy the whole book as we only want the content from
some of the pages."
Store owners said the practice hurts their interests.
"A more important problem than financial interests is that they
infringe the copyright of those book actually," said Jiang Li of
Shanghai Book City.
"We have put a sign on the wall telling people not to do
it."
(Shanghai Daily March 12, 2007)