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It seems odd that piracy should be a concern of Customs in the 1960s, as it was in the days of Jean and Pierre Laffite. But piracy still exists in modern dress and is a troublesome problem. The only practical difference between the modern pirates and the cutlass-carrying freebooters of the past is that the pirates’ methods have changed.
There was the case that might be called “The Pirates of Taiwan”—a case which created an incident of international embarrassment between the governments of the United States and Formosa (Taiwan) and a potential threat to the U.S. book publishing industry.
The “pirates” of Taiwan were the owners of small printing shops who engaged in the business of publishing—without the consent of the authors or the original publishers—almost every book of any merit printed in the English language.
With fantastically cheap labor, cheap paper, and a photo-offset printing process, the publishers in Taiwan reproduced such extensive works as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, dictionaries, sets of medical and scientific works, volumes of the classics, standard reference books, best-selling novels and popular non-fiction. The books were carbon copies of the originals, even to the U.S. copyright numbers and the phrase “Manufactured in the United States.” Nothing was changed in the pirating process, not even the typographical errors. From a casual examination, there was nothing to indicate that the books had not been published in Philadelphia, Boston, or New York.
The pirating problem became acute in 1959 when the Chinese publishers arranged contacts with sales agents in the United States, men and women usually located on or near a campus of a university or college. These agents solicited orders primarily from professors and teachers, librarians, researchers, and students. A standard set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica—normally costing about $400—was offered for less than $50. The $35 Columbia Encyclopedia was listed at $7.13. Gray’s Anatomy, a standard work for all medical students and normally costing $17.50, could be purchased for $2.50. Allen Drury’s best-selling novel of political life in Washington, Advise and Consent, cost $5.75 in American bookstores—but was advertised by the Chinese publishers at $1.25.
In some instances, the Chinese publishers obtained lists of likely customers and solicited them by mail. The prospects usually were men, women and organizations with modest incomes who were forced to operate on a very limited budget. And here they were being offered the opportunity to obtain expensive volumes of literary works—which they had long dreamed of owning—for only a fraction of the price being charged throughout the United States.
The books were shipped from Taiwan in individual packages. Even when the packages were opened for inspection by a Customs examiner, there was nothing to arouse suspicion of any irregularity. The first hint which Customs had of fraud was when a complaint was lodged in 1959 by the American Book Publishers Council and the American Textbook Publishers Institute.
The book publishers appealed for help to the State Department, the Customs Bureau, Congress and even to the White House. The sales of pirated books in the United States had become a multi-million-dollar business which threatened to destroy the American book market.
In theory, at least, the publishers could have protected themselves from the sales of pirated books in the United States by registering each title with the Customs Bureau and paying a fee of $75. The registration would have banned any import of a similar title without the publisher’s consent.