“Levels of piracy are cripplingly high across the continent…” (Policy Network.net)
“the high levels of piracy within the sub-continent [sub-Saharan Africa] within the music, film and book publishing sectors” (The Journal of World Intellectual Property, Volume 9, Number 5, September 2006 , pp. 592-627(36))
These are familiar claims, the basis for claims by certain corporate rights holders based in the global North that countries in sub-Saharan Africa should allocate more monopoly rights to them, spend a larger portion of slender state resources on the prosecution of infringement of the monpolies,and abrogate civil right in order to pursue alleged infringers.But what does high levels really mean? What can it mean for Africa in 2009?
According the International Telecommunications Union, fewer than 5% of the population of Africa have access to the Internet, and only 0.2% of Africa’s population have broadband access. Precise figures for mobile broadband penetration aren’t available, but are apparently less than 1% across the developing world (ITU, Measuring the Information Society’, ITU ICT Development Index). As a result 95% of African’s have no opportunity to download infringing material at all, and of the remaining 5% only 1.2% at most have the ability to download music or movies on any kind of scale. .
But what about infringing copying of CDs and DVDs? The 547 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa without electricity (World Bank) have no use for CDs and DVDs. In the unlikely event that one of the 46% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa living on less than 1$ a day (Economic Report on Africa, By Economic Commission for Africa, United Nations) were to make obtaining an unauthorised copy of a Sony or BMI song, or Microsoft Vista would that represent a genuine lost sale?
These are sobering statistics, a reminder of how high the barriers to joining the Information Society are for millions of Africans. They cast a new light on the familiar narrative of rampant infringement and the consequent need for an ever expanding parade of rights, organisations and punishments. They require us to critically examine every attempt to impose greater barriers to access to knowledge.
Note: the use of the term “piracy” to refer to to infringement of a statutory monopoly is utterly spurious, and is used here (for those a little slow on the uptake) ironically.
I like your general conclusion about needing to examine attempts to impose barriers to access to knowledge, but I have some concerns about statements made in getting to that conclusion.
My responses were a bit long for a comment, so I put them in a response post instead.
Keep up the great work!
thanks for your comment goldenrail, I read your blogpost with interest.
There are a few points on which you seem to have misunderstood me.
You quote me :The 547 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa without electricity (World Bank) have no use for CDs and DVDs.” and then you say: “For a statement from someone living in Africa, this really surprised me. Any African knows that you do not need electricity to have use for such things. There are always work-arounds; things like small generators and car batteries.”
You make two assumptions here, firstly that living without electricity means not wired into the grid, and secondly that I share that assumption. I don’t.
In other words I understand that the work arounds are included in the number of those who have, or that the number is too trivial for the World Bank statisticians.
goldenrail you also make the claim that “But, these laws (tighter enforcement laws) also play an important role in local economies, for the benefit of the local people.”
That is certainly the claim made by the advocates of such laws who regard it as axiomatic, a fundamental truth of the universe rather than requiring empirical verification. The empirical research on the utility of draconian enforcement doesn’t support these claims.Prof Christopher May has recorded how the “more rights good, less rights bad” approach has led some commentators to remark that the World Intellectual Property Organisation is a faith based movement.
Andrew, you are correct that I assumed electricity meant wired to the grid. You may be quite correct that the numbers include all the work-arounds, but if they do, that would surprise me a bit.
I cannot speak from any studies or research, but only of my first-hand experience from when I lived in a village in Africa. It seemed that most people had a radio and very many of these had radio/cassette players which they would power by wiring to long strings of D batteries. People using these tape players have plenty of use for cassettes, legitimately released or copied without authorization. (I know that’s not CDs/DVDs, but I assume you were generalizing media in it’s most recognizable current formats.)
In regards to the enforcement and local economies part of the discussion. I was thinking of tighter enforcement in terms of tighter than what is currently found in most places, not the draconian measures often urged by things like the USTR Special 301 Report.
My guess is, we probably actually agree on a lot of the basics but disagree when we start getting into details. Too much pressure, rights, etc. is bad. Access is very important and a key part of development and growth. There’s a lot of knowledge already out there, and people need access to it.
The questions are how much is too much enforcement/rights/etc.? And, how do we grant people the access we need while still encouraging the development of more knowledge? That’s the balance IP laws were originally supposed to strike (at least, that’s the underlying premise in the US copyright law). Unfortunately, most IP laws have gone a long way from that. I still haven’t given up on trying to reclaim that balance.
I couldn’t agree more. Whenever I hear piracy the first thing it brings to mind is big companies using the term to bully people who are mostly innocent.