Pirating anything is very illegal and it is also a big money maker in China, where copyright laws are viewed as more of a guideline than a law to be enforced. Mobile phones, sneakers, and prescription drugs are some of the famous counterfeit items on offer, and so are books. There is actually a long history of pirating popular Japanese books; in fact, this practice is what helped fuel the spread of the popularity of Japanese comics throughout Asia and then the rest of the world. This was in the pre-internet age, when distribution was slower and sources were tougher to track. Well, the allure of making scratch off of someone else’s work hasn’t faded, and pirated copies of Chinese translations of popular Japanese books have been turning up on the Apple App Store. Books by best-selling Japanese writers Haruki Murakami and Keigo Higashino, among others, are being sold at the App Store operated by Apple Inc., and have been up for sale since July, despite having had to have passed inspection by Apple. Murakami’s recent bestseller, the “1Q84″ trilogy, is among the pirated works.