Spotlight on national copyright strategy

By Stephen Chifunyise
The strategy provided a road map, key drivers of action, indicators of success and time lines. During the 2015 ZIBF Indaba held on July 28-29 a report that was presented to the stakeholders in the book sector by the reproduction rights organisation of Zimbabwe, ZIMCOPY, which highlighted what was being done to implement the National Copyright Strategy of Zimbabwe that was validated by stakeholders in the copyright sector in December 2014.

The progress report that was presented by a member of the copyright strategy implementation indicated that a national copyright forum that was recommended by the national copyright strategy to lead national efforts of implementing the strategy was established on July 7. The forum comprises representatives of the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (ZIMURA), (ZIMCOPY), the Zimbabwe Intellectual Property Office (ZIPO) in the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, the film and visual arts sectors.

The National Copyright Strategy that was developed by the members of copyright industry under the leadership of ZIMCOPY was financed by UNESCO’s International Fund for Cultural Diversity(IFCD). The strategy was produced through four activities; a capacity building workshop (June 3-5 2014), a consultative meeting (August 13-15 2014), a strategy drafting session (October 7-9 2014) and a national conference at which the national copyright strategy was validated (December 8 2014).

The strategy provided a road map, key drivers of action, indicators of success and time lines. The analysis of the current copyright regime was done through the examination of the enforcement of copyright, the copyright legislation and the administration of copyright. The strategy has ten goal areas.

In the area of enforcement, the challenges highlighted were rampant piracy, poor implementation and enforcement of the copyright law, absence of a responsive communication interface between copyright administration and enforcement organs, rampant illegal vending of published books in schools, colleges and universities, deficient knowledge of copyright by judicial officers and inadequate knowledge of copyright by rights holders.

Concerning copyright legislation, the challenges indicated were; absence of a national intellectual property policy, book policy, film policy, creative industry policy and an updated national cultural policy. Other challenges taken note of were a weak provision on the Zimbabwe Intellectual Property Office regulating collective management organisations, rights holders failing to take up cases on infringement on copyright due to uncertainties with enforcement procedures, poor docket preparations, sentences on copyright infringement not being deterrent enough and poor implementation of legislative provisions on enforcement of copyright law.

With regard to the issue of copyright administration, some challenges highlighted included: poor public consciousness and awareness of copyright infringement; reduced capacity for all those who work in the area of copyright protection, commercialisation, enforcement and administration, absence of intellectual property education curricula and the absence of tailor-made training programmes on copyright for rights holders, government officials, copyright enforcement and judicial officers.

The national copyright strategy is designed through the implementation of ten goal areas. The first goal area is on copyright education whose aim is the promotion of comprehensive knowledge on copyright. The rationale for this goal is that the lack of respect for the copyright industry by the general public in Zimbabwe can be traced to the absence in the formal education of the subject of intellectual property in general and copyright in particular.

It is therefore argued that the introduction of the concept of creativity, intellectual property rights and copyright should be ideally done to the citizens in the early stage of life and of formal education. The main objectives of this goal area are the introduction of copyright education in the formal school system in the training of law enforcement officers and the promotion of copyright education in the tertiary institutions.

The second goal area is that of copyright legislation whose aim is to strengthen, modernise, simplify and to consolidate the legal framework of copyright. The rationale for this goal is that since 2004 when the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act came into effect, many efforts made to implement the legislation have had limited success and that challenges encountered were associated mainly with the difficulty in understanding the law.

The strategy’s objectives in this regard are to determine the inadequacies of legal provision in enforcement of copyright and strengthen the effectiveness of copyright legislation to determine amendments to the copyright legislation brought about by advances in information and communication technology and to recommend the enactment of provisions for legal licenses.

The third goal area is pre-occupied with the implementation of the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act where the main aim the ensuring that copyright legislation provides the required framework clearly defining and articulating rights and obligations of copyright holders, users, and enforcement agents. The rationale for this is the need for the harmonisation of the legal framework.

It is noted that the main Act (Chapter 26:05) and the Amendment Act (No.32) have conflicting provisions for private collective management organisations and the parastatal collecting society. The main objectives of this goal are the operationalisation of the Intellectual property Tribunal, the building of the capacity of the Zimbabwe Intellectual Property Office in order for it to provide a better service to rights holders, the Government, the courts and the users of copyright information and the clarification of the functions of the Zimbabwe Intellectual property Office and the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Collective Society.

The fourth goal area deal with policies where the main aim is to encourage the development and production of policies with the participation of stakeholders. With regards to the fifth goal area of strategy, the main concern is the effective enforcement of copyright.

The rationale of this goal area is that although the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights act is considered by many in the copyright sector as containing the basic elements to manage copyright,unfortunately the enforcement regime has fallen short of the expectation. Therefore the main objective of this goal is to enhance the capacity of the police and the judiciary to enforce copyright law and to generate a strong and collaborative anti-piracy body.

During the 2015 ZIBF Indaba a representative of the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association gave a very encouraging report on the anti-piracy activities the association has undertaken and highlighted the need for writers associations to join hand with book publishers in building an effective anti-piracy body.

It was most encouraging that members of the Zimbabwe Non-Fiction and Academic Writers Association(ZANA), the Zimbabwe Writers Association(ZWA), the Zimbabwe Women Writers(ZWW) and the Zimbabwe Union of Writers(ZUW) responded positively to the call to join ZBPA in building a formidable anti-piracy body.