Let’s revisit copyright legislation

The article by Edmore Zvinonzwa in the Herald of Monday February 2, 2010 was quite instructive and has prompted me to write. It is true as highlighted in the article that most Zimbabweans do not take copyright seriously. This affects both users and the creators of the works, the copyright holders and the people who use copyright. But my worry is the copyright legislation in Zimbabwe.

The Copyright Act that is on the statute book was passed in 1966 and it was amended several times (29/1971 (s.59), 32/1979 (s.8), 29/1981, R.G.N. 1340/1973). Thus, we are dealing with legislation that was passed when the likes of Microsoft and Adobe were mere start-up companies.   Thus, the Act does not deal with digital content effectively, in my fair and clear opinion, when it comes to e-books and computer software, there are a variety of free downloads these days. In such cases, one should be allowed to distribute a copy or two of software (e.g. a copy of Microsoft Office) to friends under any new fair dealing provisions. Also computer programmes, whether source or object code, shall be protected as literary works.

Another problem with the issue of copyright is that the production and publishing industry is trying to use the old logic to solve the problem. The truth is that the old logic no longer works. We need a new logic to deal with copyright to ensure that the rights of all interested stakeholders are protected and our legislation needs to start reflecting this change.

This new legislation should further explore some of the issues already covered in the Berne Convention, Trips Agreement and Wipo treaties. The problem of control is that the strong personal protections of copyright are in conflict with the shared nature of culture. The economic benefits of copyright are built on controlling expressions, while the social and cultural benefits of copyright are based upon sharing expressions (Alick Ncube, 2009).

Under the new legislation, I think the copyright owners should have exclusive rights over the use of their material including the right to reduce the material such as printing and saving, the right to communicate the material to the public, such as faxing, emailing, text messaging, web hosting and the right to distribute the material.

In whatever material form a work is created, it should be copyright protected.