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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.

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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.

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