According to a survey conducted by the media YOUNG Finance earlier this year, 507 of the 574 books purchased on Pinduoduo were pirated.
Piracy has even become a label in Pinduoduo. When the buyer asked the customer service about book piracy, the reply was "Is this your first time in Pinduoduo?" .
In fact, as early as 20 19, Pinduoduo signed an agreement with the China Publishing Association and other institutions, announcing that it would crack down on the sale of pirated books and promote the healthy development of the publishing industry. But it seems that Pinduoduo has made little progress in cracking down on piracy.
Zheng He, the former secretary of the county party committee and a fairy tale writer, published articles criticizing many products, because their works were pirated and sold on platforms with many products.
Nowadays, the pirated publications on the Pinduoduo platform have been flooded. According to the refereeing document network, sellers in Pinduoduo have been sentenced for selling pirated books.
At present, Pinduoduo has not responded to this incident. In fact, this is not the first time that Pinduoduo has been accused of selling pirated books.
As early as 20 18, the fairy tale writer Zheng publicly reported that there were merchants selling pirated "Cpaing" series books on the Pinduoduo platform. Subsequently, Pinduoduo once responded that according to Zheng's report, the platform had sealed up the shops involved, frozen the funds and blacklisted them.
20 19, in CCTV Newsweek, supporters criticized some e-commerce platforms for selling pirated books, and even became "distribution centers for pirated books". It is said that the cause of this incident is that I met many readers who signed pirated books for nothing.
Lin found that the customer service skills of all pirated book online stores are basically the same. Customer service does not directly answer questions such as "whether it is genuine", but refers to problems such as unclear printing and chaotic typesetting as "normal phenomena". Once the buyer is tough, the customer service will directly ask the buyer for a refund.
Buyers who get a refund often choose to settle, and rarely continue to report the illegal behavior of sellers selling pirated books to the platform and judicial authorities.
Unlike many minor violations, selling pirated books is not only illegal, but also likely to constitute a crime. According to the Criminal Law of People's Republic of China (PRC), selling pirated books can be punished as long as it constitutes a huge amount or has other serious circumstances.
In fact, more than one Pinduoduo seller was arrested and sentenced by the police for selling pirated books.
According to the judgment of "(20 19) Lu 1622 No.89 at the beginning of punishment" published by China Judgment Document Network, the defendant Wang Moumou and others registered a shop named Tengfei Bookstore on the platform of Pinduoduo, selling a series of pirated books, such as "Sunshine Humor School Sister". Law enforcement departments seized 1 1959 pirated books in Wang Jiazhong. By selling pirated books, Wang made a profit of 340 thousand yuan.
In the end, the court sentenced Wang to four years in prison and fined him 80 thousand yuan for copyright infringement.
According to public information, in 20 19, Pinduoduo and China Publishing Association signed the Cooperation Agreement on Intellectual Property Protection, and the two sides will "* * * improve the cooperation mechanism on intellectual property protection and promote the healthy and orderly development of the publishing industry". But as far as the current situation is concerned, Pinduo seems to have not put this work into practice.
In addition to the rampant pirated books, another major cancer in the publishing industry at present is the "Wuhan Book" commonly known in the industry. On the platform of Pinduoduo, such books are also flooded.
"Wu" is the industry name of the publishing industry for shanzhai books, adapted books and inferior public books. The logistics cost of such books accounts for a large part of the cost. Therefore, its planning, printing and sales centers are mostly located in Wuhan, hence the name Wuhan Books.
Although it is not illegal, the proliferation of martial arts books also has the effect of bad money expelling good money, occupying the market space of regular publishing houses. Therefore, the publishing industry has great opinions on this.
On the issue of pirated books, publishing organizations have stood on the opposite side of Pinduoduo. In March this year, China Medical News, director of the State Administration of Market Supervision, criticized Pinduoduo for publicly selling pirated books.
China Medical Science and Technology Publishing House has selected 23 stores that sell books such as People's Republic of China (PRC) Pharmacopoeia and 2020 National Licensed Pharmacists Professional Qualification Examination Guide on many product platforms. After inspection, I
In the article "Three Questions about Pinduoduo" published by China Medical News, e-commerce platform has become an "extra-legal place" for manufacturing and selling fake goods? It is pointed out that in addition to the above two books, there are a large number of other medical pirated books on Pinduo platform, including but not limited to nursing examination series, nurse qualification examination series, medical practitioner examination series, drug GMP guide series and so on.
A publisher told Lin Sanfangzhou that pirated books are an old problem in the book publishing industry. Due to the concealment of piracy and the high cost of rights protection, most publishing houses are unable to cope with piracy. Some practitioners even take pirated books for granted.
However, he also pointed out that the problem in Pinduoduo lies in the rampant sales of pirated books on the platform. These pirated books have grown with the platform of Pinduoduo, and the market space of genuine books has been seriously overstocked. "The publishing industry is very dissatisfied with this."
Pinduoduo was condemned as an internet celebrity by Chen Xingjia, secretary of the county party committee. Chen Xingjia, former secretary of Badong County, Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hubei Province, published the book The Horn of the Xiajiang River: Notes on Chen Xingjia's Life. However, this book was pirated by a large number of sellers on the Pinduoduo platform, which caused his bombardment.
In Chen Xingjia's circle of friends, he accused Pinduoduo of violating the rights and interests of readers, publishers and copyright owners. At the same time, he pointed out that Pinduoduo, as a large commercial platform, should have a "minimum sense of social responsibility" instead of "playing dumb for traffic and profits".
What happened to a Pinduoduo buyer made Chen Xingjia even angrier. When the buyer told the seller's customer service about the problem of book piracy, the customer service not only publicly admitted that he was selling pirated books, but even asked the other party, "Is this your first time in Pinduoduo?" Therefore, Chen Xingjia said that he would go through the judicial process and said, "There are many products, wait."
Faced with the rampant sales of pirated books on the platform, Pinduoduo recently announced the launch of "Read More" month, and jointly launched tens of billions of book subsidies with a number of publishing houses, emphasizing the word "genuine" while lowering the price. However, this kind of sports sales of genuine books obviously can't cover up Pinduoduo's laissez-faire on the sales of pirated books. It remains to be seen how Pinduoduo will strictly control the proliferation of pirated books on the platform in the future.
Related Q&A: There are many fakes in Pinduoduo, and there is no quality inspection department? Don't buy it if you know he sells fakes.
He focuses on low prices. The quality of things is not particularly good, and you will get what you pay.