Harry Potter plagiarism in China

[Carol]

In the wake of our discussion of whether fanfic constitutes a
copyright violation and/or plagiarism, I stumbled onto the New York
Times article about Harry Potter knockoffs in China, where book piracy
amounts to an industry: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/world/asia/01china.html?fta=y

There's a photo of a man reading his unauthorized version of the
seventh book to his son, who couldn't wait for Rowling's version. He
published his version online and is now working on Volume 8 despite
not receiving the Chinese equivalent of a penny for the pirated
versions that other people have printed and sold. (He advertised for a
publisher but didn't find one, but not because of government
regulations protecting the author's rights.) The article ends with an
editor's comment about a Harry Potter "sequel," "Harry Potter and the
Chinese Empire," published by the firm she works for:

"Everything would have been fine if they hadn't made the cover so
obvious, even if you copied some sections of the original story. But
the cover was so outstanding [conspicuous?], and foreign people care a
lot about things like that." 

That is, "foreign people" (Westerners) care about intellectual
property violations. How quaint. It sounds as if the world need some
sort of international copyright law that's both more comprehensive
than merely protecting the book as a whole from unauthorized printings
and translations and enforceable. Rowling's lawyers are trying to work
with law enforcement authorities in China. Good luck to them.

If you can't access the URL, you'll need to subscribe to the NY Times
online (don't worry; it's free) or sign in if you're already a member.

If you still can't access it, go to the NY Times Harry Potter page at 

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/complete_coverage/harry_potter/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier

and scroll down to "Chinese Market Awash in Potter Books." or go to
the main page, http://www.nytimes.com/ and do a search for Harry
Potter, then follow the link to "NYTimes.com: Complete Coverage: Harry
Potter" (the page with the long URL above). 

There are also links to "Is Dumbledore Gay? Depends on the Definition
of 'Is' and 'Gay'," which those who prefer an asexual Dumbledore or
find a gay Dumbledore uncanonical may find comforting and to "Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Relative Prince," about one of the Chinese
fake Potter sequels, in which "Harry becomes a blood-lust monster" and
is "finally beaten by his classmates."

Carol, trying to envision the Chinese Braille book called 
"Harry Potter and the Chinese Porcelain Doll" and failing utterly