[Ecommerce] Copy/South Dossier: Economics, Politics, and Ideology of Copyright in the Global South

[Seth Johnson]

(Long report.  Table of Contents and Introduction pasted below.
-- Seth)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [UBMLS-L] PRESS RELEASE:   THE COPY/SOUTH DOSSIER:
Issues in the economics, politics, and ideology of copyright in
the global South.
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 16:38:50 -0700
From: Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza <zapopanmuela@YAHOO.COM>
To: UBMLS-L@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU

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.

COPY/SOUTH RESEARCH GROUP                17 May 2006
http://www.copysouth.org

"Whether you're soar away Sun or BBC 1
Misinformation is a weapon of mass destruction"
-- Faithless, "Mass destruction"

---

CONTENTS

SOME INITIAL WORDS=85

INTRODUCTION

SECTION 1 - THE GLOBAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SYSTEM IS
PRIVATISING HUMANITY=92S COMMON CULTURAL HERITAGE

  1.1 Introduction

  1.2 How privatisation and monopolisation discourage creativity
and invention

  1.3 Why this tendency is against the interests of creators and
society in general

  1.4 Monopoly ownership and its consequences for artistic
expression

  1.5 Average artists and conglomerates cannot benefit from the
same copyright system

SECTION 2 - THE ECONOMICS OF GLOBAL COPYRIGHT: THE NET CAPITAL
FLOW FROM THE GLOBAL PERIPHERY TO THE CENTRE

  2.1 Introduction

  2.2 Calculating copyright-related capital flows from the global
periphery to the centre

  2.3 From TRIPS to TRAP: Free Trade Agreements and copyright

  2.4 Reprographic collecting societies and their projected
growth in the South

  2.5 How much of this capital flow is related to copyright?

  2.6 How =91national treatment=92 increases the net outflow of
capital from the South

SECTION 3 - PRIVATISING THE PUBLIC DOMAIN AND IMPOSING
WESTERN/NORTHERN ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT CULTURAL PRODUCTION

  3.1 Introduction

  3.2 The basic values and ideology of copyright

  3.3 The differing traditions of cultural creation in the South

  3.4 Culture and creativity in the Arab countries

  3.5 Traditional/indigenous knowledge and copyright: a complex
issue.

  3.6 The criminalisation of copying in the South and the
=91piracy=92 question

  3.7 The privatisation of common culture proceeds in the South,
at a quickening pace.

  3.8 Western cultural conglomerates and the global marketing of
culture from the global South

  3.9 The role of the World Intellectual Property Organisation in
spreading the copyright system and its narratives to countries of
the South

SECTION 4 - SERIOUS AND DAMAGING BARRIERS TO THE USE OF
COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS IN COUNTRIES OF THE SOUTH

  4.1 Introduction

  4.2 Extending copyright terms extends privatisation

  4.3 Distance learners kept from study materials: experiences
from Kenya

  4.4 How copyright hinders librarians in providing services to
library users

  4.5 Copyright laws add to other restrictions on learning in
rural South Africa: an October 2005 survey from Mpumalanga

  4.6 Copyright gets in the way when teachers want to provide
student course & study packs

  4.7 An academic from Colombia tries hard to do his research =85
with great difficulty

  4.8 Using the Internet in the South: a tangled web of copyright
toll-gates and =93keep out=94 messages

  4.9 Using intellectual property laws to prop up proprietary
computer software

  4.10 The visually impaired in the South: shut out of reading by
copyright roadblocks

  4.11 How copyright presumptions trump translation possibilities
=85 and limit the sharing of knowledge

  4.12 Three legal questions related to access

  4.13 Copyright and cultural domination by the North: a
long-standing conflict that is getting sharper

SECTION 5 - RESISTANCE FROM THE SOUTH TO THE GLOBAL COPYRIGHT
SYSTEM

  5.1 Introduction

  5.2 A brief history of Southern resistance to copyright=92s laws
and assumptions

  5.3 National or regional movements opposing TRIPS as
interference in their cultural life

  5.4 Venezuela initiative on the rights of authors

  5.5 Resisting the privatisation of cultural life

  5.6 Possible alternatives to copyright in the South

  5.7 The A2K (Access to Knowledge) treaty group

  5.8 Free software: a viable and cheaper alternative

  5.9 The Creative Commons approach

  5.10 The Canto Livre example from Brazil

  5.11 Open access journals and open archiving initiatives

  5.12 Co-ordinating activities across the South

  5.13 Satire and art as resistance

  5.14 Co-operation in the South as part of wider intellectual
property activism

SECTION 6 - CONCLUDING THE DOSSIER =85 AND LOOKING AHEAD

  6.1 Some closing words

  6.2 Glossary of fifty copyright terms, phrases, and
copyright-related organisations which are used in the Copy/South
Dossier

Index of the C/S 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 =91fair use=92 or
=91fair dealing=92 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
=91assigned=92) 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=92s 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
=91pirates=92 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-=92inspired=92 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 =91information age=92 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 =91pirate=92 channels has increased
dramatically. Second, and perhaps more importantly, everyday
consumers and users of copyrighted works are now defined as
=91pirates=92 and =91thieves=92 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 =91plugged into=92
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 =91Some initial words=85=92) there are two main
competing value systems in the world and, in the current era,
=93the value system of monopolisation, corporatisation, and
privatisation is being imposed on what I think is a better
system, a system of sharing.=94 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 =91TRIPS
plus=92 treaties. The more common name for such treaties is =91free
trade agreements=92; they follow a hypocritical (and contradictory)
agenda of purporting to promote =91freer trade=92 in monopolised
goods such as patented pharmaceuticals and Hollywood
blockbusters. We ask, =93how much =91free trade=92 in Nigerian or Cuban
or Chinese films occurs within the US or Europe?=94 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
=91research propositions=92 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 =91propertisation=92 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=92s 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 =91marketable=92 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
=91national treatment.=92

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 =91piracy=92 and the relationship between the public domain
and what is called =91traditional knowledge=92 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 =91private property=92, 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 =91knowledge=92 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 =91one-size fits all=92
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=92s 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.