With the shift from the Open Air
conference to the Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest, the
Leos have separated from the pride and are out exploring different
tracks of the program. This Little Leo ventured into the combined
User Rights/Openness/Enforcement tracks session on Conceptualising
Users' Rights: Copyright, Open Access and Enforcement in Dialogue.
She felt like she wandered into a wolf pack, knowing there were
similarities between her fellow lions and these wolves but wondering
“what the heck is going on here.” Her take away from this
session was that the copyright of the future is going to come from
Africa, not from Western ideologists.
The session was introduced by Afro-Leo
Caroline Ncube who gave an overview of the Open Air project and
things from the past two days for the benefit of those who [foolishly
in this Little Leo's opinion] skipped the Open Air part of the
conference. She also gave reports from the field on IP reform
on the continent. Both Uganda and Botswana have people engaged in
advocacy work, but there is no reform on the table yet. In South
Africa, copyright exceptions and limitations as a concept is seen as
a given and the only issue is working out the details.
From there, the other speakers took
over: Niva Elikin-Koren spoke about fundamental freedoms as a force
pushing against strong intellectual property rights. Peter Jaszi talked of getting ordinary people in the United States to understand
the threat posed to them personally by strong IP rights. Lawrence
Liang of India discussed the legitimacy of IP rights. Alek Tarkowski
talked about the new definition of “Open” and the growth and
change of open models in Poland. And lastly, Delia Browne discussed
Australia's Smart Copyright Agenda, which attempts to balance
copyright compliance with cost management in the Australian school
system.
Much of the discourse was esoteric and
idealistic, coming from a mindset that does not allow for competing
views of society, whether societal structure or societal purpose.
However, as one attendee from Kenya pointed out after the program, it
helps to know what other people are thinking. Indeed, there are
some useful tidbits for the practical application-focused Africa.
Ms Elikin-Koren's focus on fundamental
rights is an idea already adopted in Africa, particularly in the
patent arena where access to medicines and public health are seen as
interests that must be balanced with IP rights – at least in the
discussions happening among those attempting to reform policy if not
within the existing policies themselves. Ms Elikin-Koren stressed
the importance of access to knowledge in the ability of citizens to
participate in democracy, requiring information to vote (or at least
to make an informed vote). Again, this concept seems to already be
incorporated as one of the balancing factors in African IP
discussions.
Mr. Tarkowski's and Ms Browne's
experiences in their respective countries demonstrate effective
balancing of interests. Poland's open movement started with
grassroots activity and as their practices became more accepted, the
movement switched to policy work and top-down integration. At the
same time, as the open movement's ideas spread, they morphed a bit
from the pure “Open” of legal openness to a more encompassing
circle where open began to mean access whether legal ease of access,
cost east of access or technological ease of access. Sometimes these
are all combined, and sometimes they are not, but even individually,
they represent an increase in access to knowledge. Australia's
changes have had a similar result as the copyright reform has focused
on easier and flexible access to works.
The main similarity between these two
experiences and what this Little Leo sees happening in Africa is a
natural flow to balance. As one participant said after the
presentation, “but what about the creator's rights? We need to
protect those, too.” The African policy makers and influencers are
not working on “copyright reform” like the Western world with its
long entrenched ideals. Africa is building its own system. Within
this conversation, there are voices pushing for the new system to
look just like the old system, but there is also an innate
understanding of the balance needed for a system to work. And this
is where Africa is way ahead of the rest of the world.
