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"Even the universities' printed materials from their own printing houses have also been photocopied," he says. Founded in 1995, Witthayaphat specialises in textbooks used in more than 10 universities. They cover engineering, law, science, business administration, arts, languages, accounting and more. It prints 25 to 30 books a year, mostly by university teachers. With more students preferring photocopies to the real thing, he says, it can take years to sell out the full print run _ usually a very modest 2,000 to 3,000 copies _ of a textbook. On average, the books are priced moderately at 200 to 400 baht. "These violations have definitely caused huge damage to the company and to the writers as they've been discouraged by the small volumes of sales," says Mr Sathit, 42. Now he's fighting back with special software that embeds a hidden message in the pages of the company's books. But once the page is photocopied, a clear message appears _ The Photocopying of This Text is a Violation of the Copyright Law _ and obscures some of the text. The innovation took the company three years to complete and cost 300,000 baht. It has patented the technique and used it to print five books so far. Mr Sathit hopes it will send a message. "I suppose most students still don't know that what they've been doing is illegal. Therefore, this can be one of the ways to tell them. "This is also one way to make the writers realise that we're taking the issue seriously and want to encourage them to keep on writing," Mr Sathit says, adding that he hopes to see sales recover by 10-15% as a result. Prof Dr Sint Punpinij, chairman of the Technology Management Department at Rajabhat University Phetchaburi, is among the authors who have felt ripped off by copying shops. The retired professor has written five books for Witthayaphat including Extension Education (579 pages, 475 baht) and The Technique of Social Science Research (400 pages, 300 baht). Each book took more than two years to complete. Yet, some of them, which had initial print runs of 3,000 copies, took two to three years to sell out. "As you can see how hard it is to complete one book, so I can't help feeling a bit ripped off," Prof Sint laments, adding that the prices of the books are reasonable. "On top of that, as everyone knows that the pay of lecturers, particularly at state universities, is little. ... Therefore, some rely on additional income of royalty fees from books sold, which also isn't much. So this is quite unjust."  Bangkok Post Section: Your Money 6 August 2007 |
