What is a Copyright ?

Copyright is a bunch of rights in certain inventive material like content, artistic works, music, computer programs, sound recordings and videos. The copyright owner has the right to control how their material is utilized.

Copyright protection is above all one of the means of promoting, enriching and disseminating the national cultural heritage. A country’s development depends to a very great extent on the creativity of its people, and encouragement of individual creativity and its

dissemination is a sine qua non for progress.

Copyright constitutes an essential element in the development process. Experience has shown that the enrichment of the national cultural heritage depends directly on the level of protection afforded to literary and artistic works. The greater the number of a country’s intellectual

creations, the higher its renown; the greater the number of productions in literature and the arts, the more numerous their so-called “auxiliaries” (the performers, producers of phonograms and

broadcasting organizations) in the book, record and entertainment industries; and indeed, in the final analysis, encouragement of intellectual creation is one of the basic prerequisites of all social,

economic and cultural development.

Legislation could provide for the protection not only of the creators of intellectual works but also of the auxiliaries that help in the dissemination of such works, in respect of their own rights. The protection of these auxiliaries of intellectual creators is also of importance to developing countries since the cultural achievement of some of these countries includes, in no small measure, performance, sound recording and broadcasting of different creations of their folklore as well.

While developing countries are often in need of foreign books, especially in the field of science, technology, education and research, they could offer to the world an abundance of their national cultural heritage, which can be protected, within the framework of copyright legislation, through

protection of the rights of these auxiliaries or of related (or neighboring) rights as they are called.

Adoption of the law is the first step. The practical value of the law depends on its effective and efficient application. This can be achieved through setting up of appropriate authors’ organizations for collection and distribution of authors’ fees. Copyright, if effectively implemented,

serves as an incentive to authors and their assignee (the publishers) to create and disseminate knowledge. It is something that society must necessarily accept if it wishes to encourage intellectual creativity, to ensure the progress of the sciences, the arts and of knowledge in general, to promote the industry using authors’ works and to render it possible to distribute such works in an organized manner among the widest possible circle of interested persons.

Copyright protection, from the viewpoint of the creator of works, makes sense only if the creator actually derives benefits from such works, and this cannot happen in the absence of publication and dissemination of his works and the facilitation of such publication and dissemination. This is the essential role of copyright in developing countries.

There are several factors influencing intellectual creativity in developing countries, apart from the pecuniary condition of most of the authors and intellectual creators themselves, who need to be offered incentives and subsidies. There is the shortage of paper for the production of textbooks for the process of continuing education (both formal and non-formal), and for production of prescribed and recommended books as also general books, which are to be placed within the reach of the common man in these countries.

The role of governments in this activity could include financial assistance in the creation and production of textbooks and other educational literature, inputs for training and also help for expansion of the library system, the creation of mobile libraries to serve far-flung and remote rural areas, etc. In this whole chain, the various links, namely authorship, publishing, distribution and 42 WIPO Intellectual Property Handbook: Policy, Law and Use fostering of the library movement on a broad base, cannot be underrated, and need to be carefully nurtured and coordinated.

In the late nineteenth and in the twentieth century considerable socio-economic and political changes on the one hand, and rapid strides in technological development on the other, have brought about substantial changes of outlook in relation to copyright. The freedom and

expansion of the press, the gradual disappearance of the feudal order, the growth of adult training and mass education schemes, the raising of standards in higher education, the increase in the number of universities, institutions of higher learning and libraries, the emphasis on the use of national languages, the development of science and technology, the changed map of the world with the birth of a number of newly independent developing nations—all these factors have caused

conceptual changes.

The challenge in this new situation is to maintain a balance between provision of adequate rewards to creators of works and ensuring that such rewards are in harmony with the public interest and the needs of modern society.