Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Text Message

In both Vietnam and Cambodia, there have been many a vendor selling bootleg literature in the street and at storefronts. These books are sometimes absurdly poor replicas of the originals, essentially photocopied contents with a glossy cover. They look like the readers that we used to use in college, the ones that were copied from my roomate's friends, who copied theirs from someone in their glee club, who copied theirs from their pot dealer. Yet, for $4 a piece, the price is certainly right. Often there are many translations available, for the bevvy of languages that come through these countries are those of the foriegners. What is more interesting, however, is the nature of these books. Yes, you've got the requisite travel bibles of the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet, both instructing people to places neither rough nor certainly not lonely (to paraphrase Alex Garland).

The majority of the books being offered deal with recollection of recent conflicts of the 1970s, both internally and domestically. These are often done in the first person, a more telling narrative of the population themselves. Peggy and I were lucky enough to have read a few of the essential texts before leaving Sydney, but have picked up several more titles each since being here in Asia. The bottoms of our backpacks are starting to become mobile book depositories. I wonder if this relaxation on copyright might be a benefit to a society such as U.S. or Australia? Although the localized languages are not available in the case of Cambodia or Vietnam, having definitive historical texts publically recognizable and reasonably aquirable must be a positive thing. These books are generally (and rightfully, in my opinon) biased towards the viewpoint that atrocities of the past have occured. None reveal the hawkish view, nor extoll virtues of the new (or disposed of) regimes. That's not what tourists want to read.

So, a proposed loophole in copyrights for books are important for a nation to understand its' history and heritage If street vendors around places like Pier 39 sold bootleg copies of say, Red Badge of Courage, Uncle Tom's Cabin or Grapes of Wrath, would this not raise awareness of these book's importance locally as well as providing outsiders a glimpse of American history? It certainly would paint a more accurate and poignant picture than the exposure the U.S. gets from what Hollywood movies portray. Further, rather than selling imitation aboriginal t-shirts and digeridoos (made in China) by the Opera House, wouldn't bootleg copies of A Fatal Shore give more of definition of what Australia has been built on. The governments could classify these books as 'National Historic Texts' and suppliment the publishers with lost revenue from the illicit copies.

Counterpoint being that having street vendors sell poor replicas of literature alongside pirated DVDs of Rocky Balboa and Borat might cheapen their message by association alone. Interestingly, in Thailand there was plenty of pirated DVDs, but no books, as the Kingdom of Smiles went through the 70s relatively unscathed and everybody is hunky dory with situation under the current monarch.

posted by ncawthon at 1:44 PM