The Copy/South Dossier

PRESS RELEASE: 17 May 2006

THE COPY/SOUTH DOSSIER
Issues in the economics, politics, and ideology of copyright in the global South.
Researched and published by the Copy/South Research Group May 2006
ISBN: 978-0-9553140-1-8 (printed edition) Not restricted by copyright

OVERVIEW:
The aim of the dossier is to open up debate on the real impact of copyright laws affecting the people of the more than 150 developing countries in the Global South, many of whom have never read a book, have no access to the Internet and are facing an indeterminate future. The dossier highlights issues that are not only unique to the Global South, but also focuses on those issues that affect both sides of the North - South divide. This dossier is addressed to the general public, researchers, educators, librarians, activists, and organizations concerned about access to knowledge who want to learn more about the global role of copyright and, in particular, copyright's largely negative role in developing countries of the global South. In more than 50 articles totalling 215 pages, we, in the Copy/South Research Group, who have researched and debated these issues over the past 12 months, have tried to critically analyse and assess a wide range of copyright-related issues that impact on the daily lives (and future lives) of those who live in the global South.

BACKGROUND:
How did the Copy/South dossier come into being? A first and draft version was prepared for a four-day intensive workshop held in August 2005 at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom and organised by the Copy/South Research Group. Of the 22 people who attended this 'by invitation only' session, more than 15 were from countries of the South. At this lively and very informative session, the draft dossier was subjected to some sharp criticisms; numerous suggestions for improvement were made, and additional articles and research angles proposed. A second version was circulated internally in January 2006. Further changes were made and this third version is the public version. It is a work of North/South collaboration, a product of the sharing of knowledge.

TO GET A COPY OF THE DOSSIER:
The dossier is being distributed for free. Go to the Copy/South website <http://www.copysouth.org>, download the dossier, and print it off yourself. It is available in various formats (PDF and RTF) and in files of various lengths to accommodate various download capacities. Alternatively, contact us by e-mail <contact@copysouth.org>, and we can post you a copy of the dossier, either as a printed copy or as a CD.

CONTACT:
If you wish to contact The Copy/South Research Group for any reason -- for example, to make criticisms of the dossier, to give your own examples, to join in the future research effort -- our e-mail address is: <contact@copysouth.org>.

FINANCIAL SUPPORTERS OF THE C/S RESEARCH GROUP: 1)The Open Society Institute, Budapest, Hungary; 2) HIVOS,The Hague,The Netherlands; 3)The Research Fund of Kent Law School, Canterbury, Kent UK.
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THE COPY/SOUTH DOSSIER: INTRODUCTION

To introduce the Copy/South project and this dossier, one must first introduce the concept of copyright. Copyright has a long history emerging from 18th century English law. Generally speaking, it is a legal regime that provides a limited form of monopoly protection for written and creative works fixed in a tangible (material) form. The owner of the copyright is given the exclusive or sole right to do a number of things with that work such as the following: a) to make copies of the work, for example, by photocopying it, b) to perform the work, such as a play, c) to translate the work into another language, d) to display it publicly, such as using a photograph in a magazine.
And to break these property-like restrictions is copyright infringement. While originally focused upon written work, copyright has been extended and expanded over the years to include maps, artwork, music, phonographic records (and later audio tapes and now CDs), photographs, and, most recently, computer software and data bases. Copyright protects the specific expression of an idea, not the idea itself, and the law - in some, though not all, countries - allows limited ‘fair use’ or ‘fair dealing’ by users of works in which the copyright is owned or held by others. Today, the law protects (and restricts) a copyrighted work for the life of the author plus fifty years in some countries or plus seventy years in others - notably in Europe and the United States where most copyrighted works are produced - or even longer in a few countries. It is relatively rare, however, for an author to retain rights to creative works; usually these rights are transferred (the legal word is ‘assigned’) to a publisher or record producer in exchange for publication, royalties or a flat fee. (In the case of employees who create copyrighted works, their employer owns the copyright in most cases.) The 1960’s UK rock group The Beatles did not, for example, own copyright in the songs they wrote, performed, and recorded.

While originating in 18th century European law, copyright law has become international in scope. Yet, in many ways, copyright has always been an international issue. When copyright owners (as distinct from authors) in the 18th and 19th centuries were demanding protection for their work, the threat to copyright control often came from booksellers publishing cheap editions for a foreign market or importing cheap editions from abroad to compete in the domestic market. It is now conventional wisdom to acknowledge that the United States was one of the worst copyright ‘pirates’ in the 19th century when it was a developing country. (The US government refused to extend copyright protection to foreign works, thereby creating a domestic market in cheap reprints of popular titles.) The creation and adoption of the European-’inspired’ Berne Convention in 1886, which remains the leading international copyright agreement, further illustrates the importance of international protection of copyright from the 19th century forward.

It is also conventional wisdom that the ‘information age’ has fundamentally transformed the scope and intensity of international copyright battles. While the history of copyright is the history of copyright expansion, computer technology has radically altered the balance between copyright owners and knowledge users. First, the ease with which digital material can be copied and distributed through ‘pirate’ channels has increased dramatically. Second, and perhaps more importantly, everyday consumers and users of copyrighted works are now defined as ‘pirates’ and ‘thieves’ as they go about sharing information, music, entertainment, and other materials found on the Internet.
(It does need to be emphasised, however, that many parts of the global South - and many who live here - are not ‘plugged into’ the Internet as they lack computers, reliable phone lines, and electrical connectivity.) These two trends help highlight the stark differences between a culture of sharing and a culture of monopolisation and privatisation. As long-time Philippines activist Roberto Verzola explained at the Copy/South workshop (mentioned above in ‘Some initial words…’) there are two main competing value systems in the world and, in the current era, “the value system of monopolisation, corporatisation, and privatisation is being imposed on what I think is a better system, a system of sharing.” As the economy continues to globalise and as we become further dependent upon computer technology and need information exchange ever more urgently, copyright and its assumptions have moved from a marginal place in economic and development theory to a relatively central place.

The fact that copyright owners, represented by the software, music, movie, and publishing industries, have been lobbying for stricter copyright control is not new. But the past few decades have been marked by a remarkable expansion of copyright laws. Perhaps the most significant victories for these copyright owners was the successful negotiation and establishment of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS), which all countries seeking to become part of the World Trade Organization were and are required to sign. When TRIPS was negotiated and came into force in 1995, it did so with considerable resistance from the global South, led by India and Brazil. From the start, it was clear to many that the TRIPS Agreement would primarily benefit already developed Northern countries far more than those in the global South. It is the multinationals of the North who already own the overwhelming percentage of global intellectual property rights (copyright, patents, trade marks and other types); the creation, expansion, and stricter enforcement of property rights, including intellectual property rights, overwhelmingly benefits those already owning property. Moreover, given that intellectual property rights extend far into the future - for example, some copyright works created in 2006 will still be under copyright in 2106 and will still be bringing in revenue - agreements such as TRIPS serve to reinforce patterns of wealth and inequality that will, if we do not create a counter movement, be a burden on the backs of several future generations, including those in the South.

Ten years have passed since TRIPS became reality. Copyright has only increased in importance over the past ten years and the pressure to enact and enforce laws as tough as or tougher than the United States continues to mount. In fact, the US was not satisfied with the level of protection in the TRIPS agreement and has continued bilateral negotiations with many countries on all other continents to create what has come to be called ‘TRIPS plus’ treaties. The more common name for such treaties is ‘free trade agreements’; they follow a hypocritical (and contradictory) agenda of purporting to promote ‘freer trade’ in monopolised goods such as patented pharmaceuticals and Hollywood blockbusters. We ask, “how much ‘free trade’ in Nigerian or Cuban or Chinese films occurs within the US or Europe?” So it will be argued here that TRIPS and its component parts, such as the Berne Convention, have simply reproduced the types of economic inequalities associated with the earliest stages of colonialism and imperialism.

This dossier seeks to provide backing to the argument that copyright laws imposed upon the global South have had, and will continue to have, a negative impact. The document is designed to provide an introductory and broad analysis of the issues associated with copyright for the global South. It also seeks to highlight some of the controversies surrounding copyright law. As mentioned in the preface, the global South does not have a monolithic approach to copyright. What we seek to do in the following pages is provide a critical assessment of copyright and its impact on the global South, keeping the issues of both access to knowledge and the protection of local cultures and cultural diversity at the forefront.

The dossier is divided into five main sections, which we called ‘research propositions’ when we began this research in 2004. The first section/ proposition looks generally at the impact of copyright on culture and seeks to highlight the unstated assumptions behind the copyright paradigm or model. The argument in this section is that the privatisation of culture through copyright is not beneficial. Rather, such privatisation fundamentally transforms our relationship to culture and centralises its ownership in the hands of corporate powers, often not even associated with the local culture. We address issues related to privatisation, the threat of ‘propertisation’ to the creative process, and the role of corporate culture in the ownership of copyrights.

The second section looks at the political economy of copyright and examines the issue from an economic perspective. Here, we argue that the global South is not the economic beneficiary of international copyright laws. Rather, the countries where more than three quarters of the world’s population resides are expected to join, without complaint or criticism, a global economy which, on the one hand, offers increased protection to Northern-owned copyrights in the global South and hence greater South-North revenue flows, while, on the other hand, continues to siphon ‘marketable’ materials from the global South for the profit of corporations in the global North. In other words, a very unequal exchange. Specifically, we look at examples of capital flow through collecting societies, the role of free trade agreements, and the economic effects, in practice, of the concept ‘national treatment.’

The third section looks specifically at the impact of the copyright system, as a western construction, on the public domain and on many long-standing cultural practices and forms across the South. In recent years, the concept of the public domain has received theoretical attention and has taken on new meaning in a world suffering from increased privatisation. This section develops an argument regarding the benefits of the public domain, especially in the context of regions and countries such as the Arab world, Indonesia, or the Indian sub-continent where important cultural forms such as music and story-telling have very different traditions from those existing in France or Germany. Of specific interest here are the questions of so-called copyright ‘piracy’ and the relationship between the public domain and what is called ‘traditional knowledge’ and the ways in which copyright issues impact on indigenous communities.

The fourth section seeks to develop the argument that the barriers created by copyright are damaging to access to knowledge by the global South. While the global North remains intent upon protecting what it sees as its ‘private property’, those in the global South continue to seek access to basic knowledge in order to improve the conditions of those living in poverty and sub-standard conditions. This section investigates barriers established to limit access to knowledge by a range of people in a range of situations: students, teachers, the visually impaired, the illiterate, the general public, in libraries, in universities, on the Internet, on their computers. And we also ask the question: precisely what ‘knowledge’ should be available?
The final section of the dossier looks to the resistance that is emerging against copyright. Resistance to copyright by the global South was an integral part of the TRIPS negotiations. Despite this resistance, the global South was unsuccessful in substantially changing TRIPS. However, in the ten years since TRIPS was signed, the issues and contradictions of copyright (and patents, which are not the subject of this dossier) have taken on a higher profile and people throughout the global South (and the global North) have begun to actively resist the imposition of strong copyright laws as well as begin to reconfigure the law - and appropriate it for their own purposes.
We believe that a focus on the global South has been too long ignored in discussions of copyright; this dossier seeks to remedy this situation. The argument made by developed countries is that copyright is supposedly good for their economies so it must be good for everyone in the world. However, a ‘one-size fits all’ approach is detrimental to many. It is important to recognize that many countries in the global South face poverty so severe that copyright protection is (or should be) far from an important item on their political agendas. Rather, literacy and education, poverty reduction, access to clean water and affordable food, and a variety of other needs are all more important than protecting the TRIPS-established property rights of foreign companies. At the same time, the dossier seeks to remain sensitive to the differences between countries in the global South, where some countries have fundamentally different priorities than others.
For example, while Argentina has a wonderfully vibrant free software movement seeking to extend access to information technology via free software, most people in Kenya do not even have access to a phone and Internet access is well beyond range. Or, as several participants at the Copy/South workshop from Brazil noted, the technology revolution in Brazil will not be based upon computers (desktops or laptops), but on cell phones where everything from text messages to MP3s are exchanged. This leapfrogging of technological services is in stark contrast to the situation on the ground in Zambia where almost 2/3 of the state’s budget is funded by foreign sources. Thus, the similarities as well as the differences between the many countries from the global South must be recognized.
Ultimately, this dossier seeks to provide an avenue into the serious discussions that must be held regarding copyright and development at the global level. We consistently look at copyright as a western idea being imposed on the global South. However, it is also time to look at the innovation coming from the global South as a model for transforming all cultures.
Furthermore, it is time to develop deeper and stronger connections between activists in the global North interested in critiquing copyright laws and those in the global South seeking the same goals. The Copy/South project and this dossier are part of what we hope will become a larger and more complex network of actors. We cannot promise and do not deliver a unified theory or single solution. Rather, what we seek to do is place a light on the global South and the problems copyright has wrought in order to not simply critique the system, but also to open the doors towards a transformation of the system at a global level.