Prof. Yu-Chi Ho pointed out (in English, you may want to read it first), with good will, a seemingly prevailing problem among Chinese students regarding to the respect of intellectual properties. The following is my comment.
I confess. I have a collection of books in PDF format. All were obtained by piracy routes. But I never think this is right. When present explicitly online (e.g. blogging) or in the real world (e.g. at a conference) I pay critical attention to copyrights issue. I paste every figure with clear awareness of its copyrights. I never photograph the slides of the speakers. I never obtained a book, or even a paper from the author. Still I confess for that I can still have the resources anyway. I confess for my hypocrisy when writing this comment.
But still my point is, Chinese people should learn the essential reasons, ethics and philosophy behind intellectual properties. They have no sense of it historically. In Chinese culture we have been taught that taking something without permission equals to stealing (不问自取是为贼也）, but the ‘things’ concerned here never include intellectual properties. Intellectual products become properties only after capitalism prevailed a society, where people can make money by knowledge and thoughts. China did not go through any serious capitalization in its history. Agricultural ethics still exists and conquers us, which does not dictates anything about intellectual products being properties of the author. Communism dream further allows Chinese people to neglect the respect of private properties in any form. Once people feel something is much more expensive than what they think should be, it is regarded ethically correct for them to change it by the most direct mean. Now that imported books in China are indeed expensive, they won’t have the least ethical burden to ask one from you. Similarly, if they think scientific founding should be shared, they photograph the slides of the speaker and even let their flashes on because they think they are doing the right and normal thing.
Intellectual products become properties only after capitalism prevailed a society
One cannot help but wonder how deep are the ethical and philosophical roots behind copyright if they only hold in the context of a capitalist society…
(VERY unpopular opinion, I know. But I’m sure it will resonate with Chinese students)
There is a famous Chinese story (洛阳纸贵), that a poet’s work was once so beloved that the paper price of major cities inflated as a result — people were busy buying bunches of paper COPYing his work.
Before intellectual products became private properties, many deeds that’s deemed offending or illegal were regarded as high respect to one’s work.
According to an article on copyright history in Wikipedia, copyright in Britain goes back to the 18th c. The Berne convention, the major international copyright ordinance, was 1887.
As copyright is about ownership I guess Andrew is right to say that it is related to capitalism.