by Bob Flaws

So I come back from an eight-day retreat and what do I find? Some gonif (Yiddish for a clever thief) in the Ukraine is selling a CD on line which contains 100 titles on acupuncture and Chinese medicine, the vast majority of which are Blue Poppy titles. This person whose name is Dr. Lev. G. Fedyniak is an old Blue Poppy customer who must've scanned all his old Blue Poppy books into his computer. His website suggests he's in the Ukraine (and, therefore, hard to get at), but our customer list puts him in Kent, England. Wherever he is, he is, pure and simple, a thief.Describing himself as an MD, he is a blot on the medical profession. We have contacted the company he is using as a Web host (HostMonster.com) and are trying to get his site taken down. What he's done is a Federal offense, and the legal people at Host Monster assure us they follow all Federal rules governing copyright.

...

This is actually the second time this has happened to us at Blue Poppy (as well as other U.S. Chinese medicine/acupuncture publishers). The last time was two years ago when a student at an acupuncture college in NY made a similar CD. However, that person did not try to sell that CD openly over the Internet. Instead, it was bootlegged through and to students at various colleges. (Obviously he knew what he was doing was illegal.) Once we learned that student's name, Bob Felt of Paradigm Publications turned it over to the FBI and that seems to've put an end to that person's activities.

Unfortunately, I doubt that this will be the last time something like this happens. In this digital age, it's just too simple to engage in such piracy, and there will always be people of no moral character who will take advantage of the technology. However, all English-speaking practitioners, teachers, and students of Chinese medicine need to well understand that, if you buy such a pirated CD or bootlegged edition, you are severely damaging the profession as a whole. We are an information driven profession. We're not selling shoes or oranges. Authors, translators, and publishers spend a great deal of time, energy, and money putting books into print -- typically a couple of years or more. If someone steals the fruits of our labor, there is no incentive for us to continue making these materials available. So that means no new books to further our education to help us help our patients. It may even mean that publishers go out of business so that even old books become unavailable -- at least legally. This is serious shit with long-term implications for the future of our profession.

So please think twice before buying such pirated materials. In fact, just don't do it. This is just as much stealing as stealing money from a convenience store. Two years ago, another publisher had to let go some of its employees because the economic impact of that piracy. That meant that real people with real families couldn't put bread on their families' tables. You may say ideas are, or at least should be, free. Maybe so. But what about the labors of those making those ideas available? Would you stiff your car mechanic for his or her labor? And what about all the money that publishers risk when they bring out a book (or even reprint an old one)? Don't those publishers have a right to recoup on their investment plus a reasonable profit? After all, they are in business. Blue Poppy directly supports 10 households, something which we are proud to do. We also contribute a large chunk of money into state and federal coffers in the form of taxes. Ideas may be free (once they become common knowledge) but the creation and dissemination of those ideas simply is not.

'Nuff said I hope.