Apple App Store Was Selling Pirate Books

Apple is accused of selling pirated Chinese translations of the books written by famous Japanese writers. The books were sold online through the company’s App store. A statement, recently sent to Apple by a consortium of Japanese book publishers, accuses the company of failing to do enough to make sure it doesn’t sell copyright infringing content on the Internet.

A whole consortium of Japanese publishers, including The Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan, The Japan Book Publishers Association, The Japan Magazine Publishers Association and the Digital Comic Association, has recently issued a press release to accuse App Store operator of violating their members’ copyrights.

As per Asahi.com, the company has been selling illegal copies of books written by best-selling Japanese writers like Keigo Higashino and Haruki Marakami. Besides, unauthorized works by Nobel Literature Prize winner, Kenzaburo Oe, have also been found available from App Store.

It is supposed that the pirates have scanned printed Chinese translations of the books, including “1Q84“ by Haruki Murakami, to later convert them into eBooks. The illegal copies of the works were accepted by the company into the App Store and are claimed to have been selling since the mid-summer. For example, the unauthorized version of Murakami’s “1Q84” appeared to be identical to a Chinese translation published in Taiwan last year.

The publishers stated in press release that while some of the books have been deleted by requests from their authors and publishers, most part of them is still being illegally sold. Nevertheless, the consortium of publishers said that they wanted to cooperate with Apple in order to find effective ways to keep illegal books off their store. In other words, they called for Apple to “operate responsibly.” Meanwhile, the Japanese publishers rejected the company’s claims that it can’t check for copyrighted content during the approval process.

As for Apple, the company said that it would be quite difficult and time-consuming to find out who owns the copyright to submitted works during the approval process. Still, the company admitted that it takes copyright violation issues very seriously and is going to respond to the Japanese consortium’s accusations in due course.