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Chinese book distributor apologizes to Yale

Posted Mon, 07/04/2011 - 22:02 by Fishville

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Old Campus, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Photo Courtesy: Fishville

Chinese book distributor apologizes to Yale

By Drew Henderson, Yale Daily News, June 16, 2011

Yale has received a formal apology from a Chinese book distributor that was responsible for a book illegally containing the content of five Open Yale Courses.

Because the licenses of courses broadcast through Open Yale Courses preclude third parties from using their content commercially, the Office of the General Counsel contacted the publisher of the book, Shaanxi Normal University Press to resolve the matter, art history professor and Open Yale Courses director Diana Kleiner said in a Wednesday email to the News.

"Yale recently has received a formal apology from Zitu Books, the distributor that falsely claimed copyright in the infringing book and is apparently responsible for the publication of the book," Kleiner said. "Yale's General Counsel's Office, in concert with outside legal counsel in China, is currently working directly with Zitu to resolve the matter to Yale's satisfaction."

She added that many retailers have already removed the book from their offerings.

Kleiner said she first learned of the apparent plagiarism through letters from Chinese students and reporters beginning on May 22. Two days later, an article published in the Chinese newspaper Global Times reported that YYeTs, a nonprofit translating group that created the Chinese subtitles of the five courses, was claiming its translations were plagiarized.

According to the Global Times article, a staff member at Shaanxi Normal University Press had claimed to have received permission from Yale before printing a book with transcripts of the five courses. But in some cases, these transcripts were 95 percent similar to the YYeTs translations. University representatives had not granted permission to publish the book and told this to YYeTs, Kleiner said.

A YYeTs representative declined to comment.

The five courses included in the books were economics Professor Robert Shiller's "Financial Markets," history Professor John Merriman's "European Civilization," philosophy Professor Shelly Kagan's "Death," biology Professor Robert Wyman's "Global Problems of Population Growth" and psychology Professor Kelly Brownell's "The Psychology, Biology and Politics of Food," Kleiner said.

Yale book in IPR row

  • Source: Global Times
  • [04:50 May 24 2011]
  • Comments

By Liu Meng, Global Times.

YYeTs, a non-profit organization providing Chinese subtitles for foreign movies and TV series, claimed in its microblog Sunday that a book published by Shaanxi Normal University Press (SNUP) this month had plagiarized its translation of subtitles to a Yale University online open course.

"We complied with the regulations of Yale University and provided the Chinese subtitles to the public for free, never anticipating that someone would take advantage of them to make a profit. I have the deepest disdain for the author," said the microblog post.

A staff member of the Beijing branch of SNUP surnamed Wang, who is also in charge of publishing the book, told the Global Times Monday that it had received permission from the author before publishing the book, but not from Yale University.

The 300,000-word book Yale University, which was written by Wu Han, is a compilation of five Yale open courses, including "Financial Markets," "Philosophy: Death" and "European Civilization."

Dangdang.com, a well-known online bookshop, released part of the content of about 700 words. The Shenzhen-based Southern Metropolis Daily found Monday that the similarity rate of the book to Lesson Two of "Financial Markets" was as high as 95 percent.

"The rate is high enough to constitute copyright infringement," Liu Wenjie, a law professor at the Communication University of China, told the Global Times. "The publisher is responsible for checking whether a book is suspected of any infringement."

According to the Yale University website, open courses are not allowed to be used for commercial purposes, which Liu argues to mean that anyone intending to profit from the open courses should first obtain permission from Yale.

Wu denied plagiarizing the work of YYeTs, but claimed that he had attended the open courses at Yale University and then rewritten the contents in the book. "I will look for the permission but I've almost forgotten where I placed it," Wu said on the phone.

Wang told the Global Times that usually the managing editor of the publishing company asks veteran editors and experts to check if the book has any plagiarism problems.

"We confirmed that there were neither previously published books with similar contents nor any related contents on the Internet," said Wang. "However, the subtitles suspected of being plagiarized appear on the video, which is really hard for us to detect."

The publisher is now waiting for Wu to provide the permission from Yale and is investigating similarities between the book and the subtitles. "If we find any copyright infringements, we will deal with it according to the law," said Wang.

The Global Times' call to YYeTs went unanswered.

It is not possible for two individual parties who have hardly had any communication to come up with highly similar translations, said Liu.

"YYeTs has the copyright on the subtitles. If Wu cannot provide enough proof in his favor, YYeTs could still sue him even if Wu did get permission from Yale University," said Liu.