Professor hungry for respect of copyright

The curious case of a Tsinghua University professor from Taiwan who went on a five-day hunger strike over alleged copyright infringements highlights an issue as old as the written word itself. Copyright violation is often perceived as a lack of respect and many times such instances can easily be avoided if some foresight is applied. Perhaps if people employed a little bit of tact, such potentially explosive scenarios might not arise.

The problem arose when Cheng Yao, a professor from the university's physics engineering department, discovered that an international assessment report written by him containing key scientific research was included in his personal introduction on a website created by the department. The main problem was that the report contained unpublished information. The professor claims his requests to have the report replaced with the original were ignored and his negotiations with the heads of the department were futile.

It seems that what made the professor particularly unhappy was that permission had been sought from all the other professors except, apparently, him. It was a situation not entirely unlike this one that the first written copyright law came into being.

This law, dating to the 6th century Brehon Law system used in Ireland, also involved scholarly individuals: monks studying and writing books in monasteries. In this case, a monk called Colm Cille borrowed a book from his former teacher, Finian. Books at the time were handwritten and usually contained intricate illustrations.

Cille had already developed a reputation for plagiarism and on one occasion the abbot of a monastery had all the books of the library buried in the orchard upon hearing of his arrival. Cille was quite taken with Finian's excellent work, but decided to copy it without telling him. This enraged Finian, who sought legal resolution of the issue. The Brehon judges finally produced the ruling "to every cow its calf, to every book its copy" in favor of Finian, a precedent used throughout the world today for copyright law. 

Interestingly, the course of action chosen by the professor was one recognized under the Brehon Law system. When a common person wanted to enforce a claim over someone of a more elevated standing in society, they would go to their door and fast from sunrise to sunset or ultimately go on a full hunger strike.

The nature of society at this time meant it was a great scandal to have someone starving themselves at their door, and it usually meant that the debtor would have to pay double the amount of the original ruling. If the person died on hunger strike, then the owner and family of the home were held responsible for the death. Suffice to say, these issues were usually resolved quite quickly.

In Cheng's case, his five-day fast publicized on Weibo has yielded positive results. The website has been taken down and he has called for more stringent copyright protection in universities. Now, there's some food for thought.