Pay copyright fees for creative material use - Judge urges users

A Justice of the Court of Appeal, Justice Poku Adusei, has underscored the importance of users of creative materials to pay for copyright to help the growth of the creative industry.

Delivering a lecture on copyright, Justice Adusei said users of copyright-protected materials such as books had an obligation under the law to pay copyright fees to CopyGhana, a collective management organisation (CMO) authorised by law to manage the collective rights of text and image-based copyright owners.

The Justice of the second highest court of the land delivered the lecture on the topic: "Collective Licensing and the Copyright Laws of Ghana,” at a sensitisation workshop on copyright organised by CopyGhana, in collaboration with the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisation (IFRRO) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

The nationwide workshop, which was on the theme: “The Relevance of Collective Licensing on Text and Image-Based works in the Digital Transformation Era,” meant to educate copyright owners and users on copyright, was held in Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast and Tamale.

Reprographic fees

Using educational institutions as a point of reference, Justice Adusei said although such institutions had some protection to use copyright works, most of those institutions and their students reproduced such works and, therefore, they ought to pay the reprographic fees as stipulated by law, as such practices were not fair usage to attract protection from copyright.

The Appeal Court Justice shared an anecdote from his early days in Law school, when there were insufficient copies of books available, prompting students to make photocopies to access necessary course content.

Justice Adusei stated that similar practices persisted in tertiary institutions presently.

“Given the rampant and substantial nature of photocopying and digital copying, which cannot be classified as fair use, it is essential for educational institutions to sign licensing agreements with CopyGhana and pay an annual blanket fee.

This fee would cover all students, librarians and staff who use extracts of copyrighted works in their duties,” he said.

Again, he said, the argument that educational institutions, especially the public ones, needed parliamentary approval to charge fees could not be used as an excuse not to pay such copyright fees.

Justice Adusei said the nature of copyright made its enforcement problematic as it was private right that generally required private efforts for enforcement.

Private enforcement, he said, was challenging in the digital age where creative work could be accessed and reused anywhere in the world.

A research consultant, Dr Magnus Ebo Duncan, said a survey conducted concluded that many people, especially students in educational institutions, accessed their materials through digital means.

He said out of 1,000 respondents, 82.8 per cent respondents identified texts and images from the Internet as their largest source of learning materials, while the rest of the respondents indicated that handouts from lecturers were a primary source of learning materials.

“Mobile phones or tablets were reported by 85.2 per cent of respondents as the most commonly used electronic devices for accessing the Internet. E-books constituted the largest category of materials downloaded from the Internet,” Dr Duncan added.

According to him, many of the respondents, despite their reliance on the Internet for educational materials, believed that such materials should be free, posing a big challenge for copyright owners.