Copyright Aided by New Law
Cam McGrath,
Middle East Times,
Jul 22, 2002
This doesn't have directly to do with online learning (but should serve as a caution to the copyright buffs out there). The Egyptian government has finally enacted a modern copyright law to comply with its membership in WTO (a whole other debate I won't touch on here). One provision in the law is that materials that are not translated into Arabic within a three year period lose their copyright protection. Now of course there are howls of outrage, but it seems reasonable to me. If copyright owners cannot even be bothered to make their work available to a huge population, why should they enjoy continued protection? Without such a provision, the vast bulk of work would never be translated into Arabic, and this has unacceptable cultural and political implications. Presumably this also applies to educational materials. The message is: if you aren't prepared to serve a global audience, don't demand global copyright protection.
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