Signing autographs for readers, Nguyen Nhat Anh was "speechless" before a pile of fake books

"As soon as the real book came out, fake books flooded the internet."

On the afternoon of August 29, the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution (Ministry of Information and Communications), the Vietnam Publishing Association in collaboration with the Academy of Journalism and Communication organized a workshop on "The impact of pirated and counterfeit publications on the development of reading culture".

Opening the workshop, Associate Professor Dr. Tran Thanh Giang, Vice Chairman of the School Council, Vice Director of the Academy of Journalism and Communication, emphasized that each book is a product of knowledge and ethics, which needs to be respected and protected in terms of principles, content and form of transmission.

However, in the domestic book market, printing and distributing pirated and counterfeit publications has long been a burning problem.

Overview of the workshop on the afternoon of August 29 (Photo: Minh Nhan).

According to Mr. Giang, many famous literary works and academic books are the results of hard research by scientists... being copied indiscriminately, printed and bound carelessly, printed on poor quality paper, not meeting technical standards, with spelling and font errors, not edited or censored in terms of content and form...

Many books and publications are pirated using high technology, making it difficult for users to distinguish between real and fake.

In particular, taking advantage of the development of the Internet and digital media, many pirated/counterfeit publications, both traditional forms such as printed books and new forms such as audiobooks, e-books, etc., are openly sold, advertised heavily, and illegally exploited on social networking sites and e-commerce platforms.

According to a 2022 study by Media Partners Asia, Vietnam ranks third in the region in terms of copyright infringement rates in the digital space. Per capita, Vietnam ranks first, with about 15.5 million illegal viewers.

According to the report of the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution in 2022, the authorities confiscated and destroyed 127,051 publications of all kinds, and imposed administrative fines of VND 677,000,000 (an increase of 3% compared to 2021).

"As soon as copyrighted books are released, fake books are sold everywhere online. The problem of pirated/fake publications has not been thoroughly resolved and is "killing" genuine publications," said Mr. Giang.

Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Bao, Deputy Director of the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution, said that readers' use of pirated and fake books has helped bad actors have a market for consumption; caused damage to the interests of individuals, organizations and agencies; violated copyright; violated the law...

Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Thanh Giang, Vice Chairman of the School Council, Deputy Director of the Academy of Journalism and Communication (Photo: Minh Nhan).

Writer Nguyen Nhat Anh "speechless" before the pile of fake books

Mr. Hoang Anh Hao, representative of Tre Publishing House, said that more than 300 of the company's books are being counterfeited and pirated. This is the group of 20% of the best-selling books, bringing in 80% of the publisher's sales, or in other words, the books that have "fed" the publisher for many years.

According to Mr. Hao, books that have been published for over 20 years, books that have been reprinted 76 times with hundreds of thousands of copies, or books that have just been published and are printed to cover the market the fastest, are all counterfeited and pirated.

Mr. Hao believes that one of the negative impacts of the problem of pirated/fake publications is to eliminate genuine creators, causing them to lose the motivation to research and explore to create interesting and quality works.

He gave an example of a book signing in Hanoi by writer Nguyen Nhat Anh. A young reader brought 10 books and waited from 8am to 12pm for his turn. When looking at the pile of books, Nguyen Nhat Anh stopped and pondered, saying that he could not sign them because all 10 books... were fake.

Writer Nguyen Nhat Anh at a book signing session for readers (Photo: Tre Publishing House).

Mr. Dinh Quang Hoang, Director of WAKA E-Book Joint Stock Company, said that only 2-3% of customers care about whether the products they buy are real or fake.

Anti-counterfeiting solutions such as smart stamps for printed books, or electronic markers (digital watermarks...), intellectual property registration on verification technology, are little known to users.

"Now, fake books are of the same quality as real books, with identical content," said Mr. Hoang.

According to him, users are being put in charge: "Be smart consumers". But in fact, if smart, readers often choose to buy pirated books with almost the same quality but cheaper price.

WAKA representative said that if publishers and book producers want users to stand on their side in this "war", they must bring benefits to readers. That is, create high quality products that pirated producers do not have the capacity to do.

Not only traditional printed books, but also e-books and audiobooks are easier to pirate. Mr. Nguyen Luan, Copyright Director of Voiz FM audiobook company, said that over the past 4 years, the unit has had to face the problem of copyright infringement on the Internet with increasingly high levels of organization and sophistication.

3 common forms of copyright infringement in audiobooks include: Audiobook USB/shared links; Audiobook YouTube channels and Websites. Of these, YouTube channels that specialize in posting audiobooks infringe the most copyright.

According to Mr. Luan, it is the conveniences of technology that have helped YouTube channels "sprout like mushrooms after the rain", causing direct damage to publishing units, the state budget and reading culture.

According to a survey by Voiz FM, Vietnam is one of the few countries where the rate of Internet users searching for audiobooks is higher than that of e-books. Seizing this trend, copyright violators have organized recordings of a series of best-selling books on the market to attract views and illegally profit from advertising revenue.

Readers can find pirated audiobooks of any best-selling title on YouTube. This directly affects the sales of physical books, e-books, and audiobooks, causing financial difficulties for publishing companies when they cannot earn the expected revenue.

"If dealing with copyright infringement with paper books is one difficulty, dealing with this situation with audiobooks is ten times more difficult," Mr. Luan admitted.

Blacklisting of counterfeit/pirate publishers

Concluding the workshop, Mr. Nguyen Nguyen, Director of the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution, summarized the negative impacts of pirated/counterfeit publications and proposed a number of solutions.

Accordingly, publishers need to join hands to destroy the counterfeit book market, flexibly apply management solutions, create new, competitive products, making it difficult for bad guys to pirate and counterfeit.

"We also need to create a "blacklist" of violators to eradicate this problem," said Mr. Nguyen.

Mr. Nguyen Nguyen, Director of the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution, delivered a concluding speech at the workshop (Photo: Minh Nhan).

Regarding the sanctions for the printing of pirated and counterfeit books, which still have many shortcomings, Mr. Nguyen said that in the coming time, the Ministry of Information and Communications will review the legal framework and study and amend some contents in the Publishing Law to keep up with reality.

The Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution will also work with platforms like TikTok to take copyright action against commercial floors or stalls that violate copyright.

The Director especially emphasized the role of schools in combating the problem of pirated and counterfeit books. According to Mr. Nguyen, there have been schools where students have failed because of using pirated and counterfeit books because "they failed right from the beginning, violating the law when they first entered school".

"Therefore, in propaganda, the story starts with the awareness of using books and documents in training facilities, which is very important," said the Director of the Department of Publishing, Printing and Distribution.

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