access to knowledge in egypt : a qualitative analysis national seminar 14, march 2010 dr. perihan...
TRANSCRIPT
Access to Knowledge in Egypt : A Qualitative Analysis
National Seminar 14, March 2010
Dr. Perihan Abou ZeidLecturer at the Faculty of Legal Studies and International Relations
Pharos University
The existence of numerous works on Intellectual Property Rights.
Focus on Patents and developing world and Egypt has gained significant
importance in comparison to copyrights.
There is an obvious lack of literature pertaining to Access to Knowledge
(A2K) regardless its importance to Egypt.
Pioneering study written by Prof Hossam Alsagheer and Dr. Hassan
Badrway titled Copyrights under Egyptian Law: Analytical study from a
developmental Perspective published by Bibliotheca.
The African Copyrights and Access to Knowledge study which was issued
last June 2009.
The “Access to Knowledge in Egypt” book in 2010. And the launch of the
Access to Knowledge for Development Center in the AUC (A2K4D).
The launch of the first student society on A2K in Egypt at Pharos
University in Alexandria.
A2K Environment in Egypt
The dearth of treatment of A2K issues can be attributed to the lack of appropriate awareness of its importance and the absence of influential lobbying.
Unlike other causes, such as the ‘the right to medicine’ and ‘medicine for all’ initiatives which were lobbied and funded by Egyptian generic pharmaceutical companies that rejected the stringent measures of TRIPs Agreement, the A2K cause is thus far neglected.
Stakeholders from the following categories were interviewed for the study:
Government Officials: (Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA));
Users: Education community (graduate students, librarians from public libraries, professors and researchers from different life science fields, university e-learning projects);
Rights-holders: (publishers and Publishers’ Association).
Interviewees expressed different levels of knowledge of copyright law:
Graduate students showed significant unawareness of the law.
Some librarians were not aware of very important exceptions
such as the public domain.
Some publishers were not aware of the translation exception.
Researchers considered IPRs in general as a major barrier for A2K and research.
Most interviewees believed that copyright law in Egypt is not sufficiently enforced. Some officials expressed concerns regarding the lack of comprehension of the law by users, rights-holders and judiciary.
Publishers find it necessary to track down the infringers by themselves and report them to authorities.
Libraries enforce vigorous access-restricting policies in comparison to the national laws.
Users believe that stringent implementation of the current copyright laws would hamper their access to learning materials.
- Library Stocks: Most postgraduate students complained the lack of newly
published foreign material.
Bibliotheca relies originally on donations, therefore, it does not itself select the material for its stocks. The variety is, however, increasing and BA has become more attractive to different types of researchers.
Various library users complained that most libraries are very strict regarding their lending facilities. Most libraries do not allow students to borrow books but rather reading and accessing the book within the library or photocopying a specified percentage of the work.
D- Libraries and Archives:
The law permits documentation centres, archives and non-profit
libraries to make one single copy of a work in the following cases:
Reproduction is made upon a request made by a natural person
for using in study or research.
Reproduction is made for the purpose of preserving or substituting
an original copy.
The law does not tackle public lending rights.
PRACTICE:
Investigated libraries were found to apply restrictive policies that
affect access to works in general whether protected or not such
as: banning or restricting borrowing – quota photocopying
schemes – and the over protection of audiovisual materials.
- Library Stocks: Most postgraduate students complained the lack of newly
published foreign material.
Bibliotheca relies originally on donations, therefore, it does not itself select the material for its stocks. The variety is, however, increasing and BA has become more attractive to different types of researchers.
Various library users complained that most libraries are very strict regarding their lending facilities. Most libraries do not allow students to borrow books but rather reading and accessing the book within the library or photocopying a specified percentage of the work.
- Internet Access:
Internet databases are very attractive to postgraduate users since they usually include current issues of journals whereas hard-copy versions are usually only available for older issues.
Access to Internet-based databases were available in the examined libraries however we noticed that they are more extensive in some libraries than the others for economic factors mostly (PCs).
- Economic Situation:
An often-mentioned reason for problems with accessing information is the economic situation of the information-seeker.
Publishers argue that the market is small, which drives up prices.
Users from different academic and research fields and levels, criticised the prices of copyright protected learning materials in general specifically all up-to-date foreign books whether they are hard-copies or soft-copies.
Illegal photocopying of entire books is an important mean for accessing up-to-date material at affordable prices.
- Educational System / 1:
The educational system in Egypt presently faces a number of challenges such as (1) the massive numbers of students in schools or universities, (2) limited educational budgets, (3) rigid educational methodologies.
Users and publishers were of the opinion that the illegal reproduction of university books by copy shops is not the main threat to the copyrights of authors and publishers.
Publishers were concerned of the illegally produced-summarised Memos of these books. This is not due to the cost of the book but to also the willingness of the students to rely on books.
- Educational System / 2:
Currently there is an increase in the number of undergraduate students who use the BA for research. More and more people know about it as professors request more research papers and they direct the students to the BA.
This indicates that the availability of materials may indeed encourage the actual use of them.
Most of the patrons in the BA are undergraduates who mainly come from universities located in Alexandria such as Alexandria University, Arab Academy for Science and Technology, and Pharos University. While number of postgraduate students, Ph.D. researchers, and researchers from different scientific backgrounds and professional posts, come from other Arab countries.
- Disabilities:
Examined libraries have a special section for the blind. Alexandria University also has a special centre which provides human readers for blind students. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina provides courses to train the blind to use such facilities.
Still disabled people we interviewed said that they still encounter many difficulties in accessing learning materials.
Their difficulties pertain to financial, technical and logistical aspects. Moreover, new technologies such as Mp3s help persons with disabilities and many technologies specifically designed to assist disabled people are often unaffordable and remain highly protected with TPMs.
- Translation:
The exception hardly has an effect on the market because most of Egyptian publishers are usually not familiar with it.
For example, the ‘Reading for All’ project as well as the ‘Thousand Book’ book series both rely heavily on translation, yet both of them acquired licences for these translations.
Some publishers stressed that they would never resort to the translation exception to keep their good reputation and good standing with foreign publishers, while other publishers expressed enthusiasm about it as they did not fear a reprimand from foreign publishers either because they have not been cooperative or because they deal less with publishers from abroad.
- Personal Use: The Egyptian law allows for far-reaching photocopying of
copyright protected material for personal use however libraries’ accessing policies may hamper its application.
The strict and inflexible quota system: 20 % or 10% per day regardless of the size the book photocopied from. This policy is generally adopted upon authors’ requests.
Borrowing books is generally banned to prevent destructive behaviour by users.
We noticed, however, that the actual enforcement of these strict policies varies from institution to institution. Especially in public libraries, it is usually possible to disregard these policies.
In our research we have not detected that copyright infringements have a detrimental effect on the availability of material in Egypt. Occurrence of copyright infringement may cost publishers and other rights-holders money, but it does not stop them from publishing their material.
6- Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) / 1
Egypt started its e-learning project almost five years ago by establishing the National Center for Electronic learning. The project’s objective is to support and develop e-learning in Egyptian universities by establishing a centre for that purpose in each university.
Professors willing to provide their learning materials electronically usually sign an agreement for that purpose and obtain a compensation for their contribution.
In Alexandria University most of these courses require enrolment keys which hamper non registered students to access those materials. Electronic learning materials are mostly protected with passwords and other digital rights management systems (DRMs) that do not allow free access.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) / 2
Stringent protection measures are implemented due to requests by professors as they require stringent DRMs for the maximum protection of their works.
With regard to ICTs designed for the benefit of disabled students some disabled users explained that in order to operate such technologies, often additional external devices need to be installed/ attached to their PCs. Such devices are, however, usually very expensive and therefore often beyond what they can personally afford.
Egypt’s copyright law clearly prohibits the circumvention of potentially access-hampering ICTs. The use of information and communication technologies in Egypt, although still in early stages, shows that copyright-holders are inclined to safeguard their works by means of technological protection measures.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
1- Libraries
- People with Disabilities
It is important that libraries in Egypt should focus more on facilitating the access by disabled users to available materials through hiring qualified human resources to assist them in accessing such materials, ensuring that disabled-compatible materials are available, and adopting new ICTs that are specifically addressing this category of users.
We recommend that libraries should reconsider their borrowing restriction policies and adopt other measures that may prevent such destructive behaviours by users, such as requiring a copy of their personal ID or imposing fines in cases where borrowed books are damaged or not returned by their due dates.
It is advisable that libraries should embark on a mechanism for listing public domain materials. Such a mechanism would allow users to know that the material at hand is not protected with copyrights and accordingly they have more freedom to rely on it within their learning and research.
The BA might explore the possibility of developing a policy to use print-on-demand machines to make available public domain materials.
Library codes of ethics have a very important role to play, not only in guiding users’ behavior but in ensuring that librarians and users understand well the applicable laws that govern using resources and materials within a particular library.
We suggest that libraries’ codes of ethics include a comprehensive guide on legitimate library exceptions and user rights.
In particular, these codes of ethics should allow photocopying for personal use beyond the narrow limits in place at the libraries interviewed for this research.
Internet and Internet-based databases are very important tools for A2K. They ensure swift access to recent and updated educational and learning materials.
We recommend that more funds should be allocated to maximizing Internet facilities, given their supreme importance in accessing up-to-date learning materials.
Materials should be available on an open access basis to other Internet users, and not restricted to students enrolled in the programmes.
Another important policy recommendation is the importance of encouraging the development of free and open source software (FOSS) as an important tool for maximizing access to software.
Encouraging authoring professors of the importance of the A2K cause in the developing world, including Egypt. It is important to introduce authors to, and inform them of, the existence of flexible copyright protection schemes – such as Creative Commons licenses – which protect the rights to the work but also help in its dissemination.
• Legislative reform to the EIPRPA should be undertaken to ensure that the law reflects Egypt’s interests as a developing country.
• Non-legislative hurdles to access to learning materials, such as restrictive library lending policies, should be eliminated in order to maximize access to learning and educational materials.
• Increasing awareness of access to knowledge initiatives and movements among different stakeholders in general also remains an extremely crucial objective, since it will ensure that related future steps are inclusive of efforts towards greater access to knowledge as a means towards development.
