| The
book was a third of the store price. I told the vendor it was a pirated version of
Harry Potter. She nodded and asked me, “Are you going to buy it?” |
Are
illegally copied books like forged banknotes and should they be destroyed?
Judges, authors and publishers in Chile are all taking a stand in a heated debate
The basketball court
in a Santiago police station was piled high a few months ago with over 150,000 books,
galley-proofs and printing materials—all of them illegal. Seized in a series of police
raids in three Chilean cities ordered by Carlos Escobar, a deputy judge of the Second
Criminal Court, the collection marked the biggest defeat yet for the country’s pirate
book industry.
But these impounded books only created a new problem: what should be done with them?
Judge Escobar took the initiative, ordering that they be distributed to the city’s
poorest neighbourhoods and other parts of the country.
“I did so because a judge is free to decide what happens to seized items, and if
they’d stayed under court control, their condition could have deteriorated,” he explained.
“Our country is poor and there’s an urgent need for our children to read. That’s
why I think burning books is an outrage.”
Just
a bargain or the only road to reading?
The
judge’s decision sparked very different reactions. Most people thought it was a good
idea. Some authors, such as journalist Patricia Verdugo—whose many books investigating
the Pinochet dictatorship have been widely pirated—thought the judge was wrong. “What
right does he have to give away things that don’t belong to him?” she asked in an
interview with the daily newspaper La Tercera. “These books should be destroyed,
just like confiscated drugs are destroyed.”
Her colleague Hernán Rivera Letelier, a popular Chilean author translated
into several languages, does not agree. Pirated books, he argues, are a way to reach
more readers. “I’m not siding with the pirates but with the readers,” he says. “The
people who buy one of my books in the street aren’t the same as those who’d buy it
in a bookshop. They’re less well-off and can’t afford the official prices.” Not true,
replies Bartolo Ortiz, general manager of the Planeta en Chile publishing house.
“I’ve seen very elegant-looking people buying books on the street. I think reading
is just less important for them compared to other things.”
Whichever stance is adopted, one fact is certain: the publishers are going to appeal
Escobar’s decision.
During the year 2000, a total of 308,000 pirated copies of 400 books put out by various
publishers were seized in Chile. “We reckon we lost $25 million last year,” says
Eduardo Castillo, president of the Chilean Book Association. “This country is top
of the league in terms of pirated books.”
The publication of pirated books in Chile grew out of the need for undercover political
activity. During the 1973-89 military dictatorship, for example, the Chilean Communist
Party published Che Guevara’s diaries and other banned material. Various people recently
interviewed in the book industry insist that certain unnamed employees of lawful
publishing firms themselves deal out original copies of books to the forgers, obviously
in return for money.
Bringing
the government to heel
Castillo
disagrees, noting that publishers have joined together to investigate, file lawsuits
and gather evidence in an effort to punish the guilty. Pedro Bosch, a lawyer who
works for Editorial Sudamericana, says that in two years of investigations, the firm
has filed 60 complaints resulting in charges against 200 people, 50 trials and the
seizure of over 30,000 books. “In this way we’ve been able to find out who the pirates
are, build a database and curb the damage being done,” he says. “But the market isn’t
going to go away.”
Authors, publishers, booksellers and judges at least agree that the government has
so far paid little interest in taking a firm stand against book piracy. They nevertheless
hope an imminent report commissioned by Chilean President Ricardo Lagos from the
Book Association may change all that.
Meanwhile, on a corner of Santiago’s busy Avenida Providencia, a street vendor asks
his assistant to fetch some more Harry Potter books. She goes off to get them from
her makeshift storeroom, hidden behind an ice-cream cart. I was interested in one
book and asked the price. It was $6, less than a third of the price in a bookshop.
She said she sold between $35 and $55 worth of books each day.
The average monthly salary of most Chileans is about $625. I told the vendor it was
a pirated version of the book. She nodded and asked me: “Are you going to buy it?” |
