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by throwaway74354 341 days ago
It's important part of the culture and is not considered cheating. IP protection laws legal precedents are not the universal truth.

This article on the topic is a good explainer, https://aeon.co/essays/why-in-china-and-japan-a-copy-is-just... , but it's a thoroughly studied phenomenon.

1 comments

Thanks for this read, it really opened my eyes to some things I thought were universal - what copying actually is.

More interestingly that article dives into the reasons why keeping “old stuff” around (instead of renewing it) is only a winning strategy while your society is “only” a few centuries old. The West will one day be old enough that it decides to renew its old stuff too, just like the eternally 20-year-old Japanese temple.