[url=http://news.ft.com/cms/s/fea5b154-a23b-11da-9096-0000779e2340.html]Bad copyright advice ‘stunts learning’[/url]

By Frances Williams in Geneva
Published: February 20 2006

Poor countries are being wrongly advised to enact tougher copyright laws than required by international treaties, making access to copyright publications prohibitively expensive, Consumers International charged on Monday.

The non-governmental organisation said all 11 Asian countries it had studied, including China, India and Malaysia, granted copyright owners more protection than needed under global rules, and none provided all the permitted exemptions and flexibilities.

“As a result, copyrighted educational materials in these countries are expensive and consumers are being priced out of access to knowledge,” said a CI report. A book costing $27 in Indonesia was equivalent to a US student paying more than $1,000 in GDP per capita terms.

The London-based group, which links more than 230 consumer organisations in 113 countries, said the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organisation was giving “thoroughly inadequate” advice to poor nations. Such countries were already under pressure from the US and other industrialised countries to provide ever stronger copyright protection.

Wipo’s “misleading” draft laws were reinforcing this pressure by including rights not required by international treaties and by failing to point out flexibilities, especially those relating to use of copyright work for educational purposes.

The World Trade Organisation’s intellectual property agreement, the Berne Convention and the Wipo Copyright Treaty all have provisions for public access to knowledge. However, the CI study showed, for example, that none of the 11 Asian countries had laws allowing the use of copyright works in educational broadcasts and five unnecessarily restricted the number of copies that could be used as teaching materials.

Richard Lloyd, CI director-general, said: “In order to educate people, schools, universities and libraries need access to affordable teaching and learning materials . . . Wipo’s actions are a disservice to developing countries.”

A Wipo spokeswoman said the agency presented countries with a range of options they were free to follow, adapt or ignore.