“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.