Browsing by Subject "copyright"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Open Access
    Access to Knowledge in Africa: the role of copyright
    (2010) Armstrong, Chris; de Beer, Jeremy; Kawooya, Dick; Prabhala, Achal; Schonwetter, Tobias
    The emergence of the Internet and the digital world has changed the way people access, produce and share information and knowledge. Yet people in Africa face challenges in accessing scholarly publications, journals and learning materials in general. At the heart of these challenges, and solutions to them, is copyright, the branch of intellectual property rights that covers written and related works. This book will help educators identifying challenges for learning materials access posed by copyright laws in Africa. Some solutions as to how to overcome these challenges are provided.
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    Open Access
    ‘Equitable Intellectual Property Protection of Computer Programs in South Africa: Some Proposals for Reform’
    (Juta, 2012) Ncube, Caroline
    This paper provides a brief overview of the copyright, patent and trade secret protection of computer programs in South Africa and then sets out suggestions for how this protection could be altered or better implemented to create a more equitable balance between creators’ and users’ rights. The overview of intellectual property (“IP”) protection of computer programs is brief as there is already a substantive body of South African specific literature that discusses it extensively. This paper’s main focus is the evaluation of the equity of the protection and making reform proposals. A computer program is a series of instructions which enable a computer to perform a task or achieve a result.3 Computer programs are created in human-readable source code which is then compiled or translated into machine-readable object code. In copyright parlance, object code is “merely an adaptation of source code”.
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    Open Access
    Key copyright issues in African distance education: a South African case study
    (Taylor Francis, 2011) Ncube, Caroline
    This report draws primarily on the results of the recently concluded African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) Project (see http://www.aca2k.org/), which investigated copyright and access to learning materials in face-to-face, distance education (DE), and dual-mode tertiary educational institutions in Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda (Armstrong, de Beer, Kawooya, Prabhala, & Schonwetter, 2010). The project’s main research question was whether copyright laws, policies, and practices in the eight countries maximized access to learning materials. Its research methodology included legal doctrinal review, interviews, document analysis, and comparative analysis of the country findings.
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    Open Access
    OER4Us
    (2012) Mitchell, Veronica; Southgate, Nicole
    The enabling environment of the internet brings far-reaching changes to Intellectual Property issues. Using the internet as a resource for teaching and learning is becoming an imperative in Higher Education. However lack of awareness about online copyright laws frequently leads to unintentional breaching of these laws especially in terms of images. This workshop for Year 1 students in the Health Sciences Faculty aims to educate students about OER, to develop their capacity to source appropriate material (especially images) on the World Wide Web, to raise an awareness of online copyright issues and to assist the students in understanding and respecting copyright laws. The link between health and human rights is used as the main topic for guiding students' searches.
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    Peer to peer file sharing in music works; is it an intrusion to copyright? case study of Tanzania
    (2010) Mrutu, Mercy Ezekiel; Ferguson, Steve; Rens, Andrew
    The dissertation critically analyses the effect of peer to peer file sharing in music copyright. Traditionally Copyright law was meant for material or physical works, however, with the development in Information and Computer technology and later digital technology, copying has been made simple and more efficient. As a result, people can now get copyrighted works through peer to peer file sharing, regardless of whether such practice infringe or does not infringe owners exclusive rights. Various countries have taken various steps including amendment of relevant copyright laws and through case decisions in order to balance between users' interests and interests of copyright holders for purposes of making such laws up to date. This study analyses various approaches undertaken by the United States of America and European Union in order to find out how their copyright law developed and addresses issues of digital copyright infringements of music through peer-to-peer file sharing and draw lessons for Tanzania. The interest to carry out this study was intensified by the extent of the problem after discovered that currently music is easily and freely transferred through peer to peer file sharing and at times owners of copyright are not considered through such music transfer. This study assed the current legal position of Tanzania in respect of peer to peer file sharing and assessed whether it provides for music copyright infringement through peer to peer file sharing. The study further reviewed the position of United States of America and European Union in order to make out how their legal framework addressed the problem of peer to peer file sharing in music copyright. The finding of this research was obtained through library research. Findings of this research revealed that the Copyright and Neighboring Rights Act, No 7 of 1999 of Tanzania does not specifically provide for electronic copyright infringement and consequently for music copyright infringement through peer to peer file sharing.
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    South Africa
    (Juta, 2010) Schonwetter, Tobias; Ncube, Caroline; Chetty, Pria; De Beer, J; Armstrong, C; Oguamanam, C; Schonwetter, T
    South Africa is the world’s 25th-largest country by surface area, and 24th-largest by population. It is located at the southernmost region of Africa and divided into nine provinces: Limpopo, North West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape. South Africa’s colonial past dates to the 16th century. Slavery was widespread by the 17th century and was not abolished until the mid-19th century. Racial discrimination was rampant during the apartheid era between 1948-94, when South Africa was governed by the National Party. After protracted negotiations, the first democratic elections were held under an Interim Constitution in 1994. This negotiated transition from apartheid to democracy has been hailed as both ‘one of the most astonishing political achievements of our time’ and ‘a miracle’. Since 1994 the government has been led by the African National Congress (ANC), which won democratic elections in 1999, 2004 and 2009. Since 1994 the government has pursued democratisation, socioeconomic change and reconciliation.
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    Student practices in copyright culture: accessing learning resources
    (Taylor & Francis, 2016) Czerniewicz, Laura
    Using Schatzki’s practices framework as a lens, this paper reports on the practices of university students accessing learning resources at a research-intensive university in South Africa. Using a mixed-methods approach, 1001 survey responses and 6 focus groups were analysed to explore how students in three professional disciplines access learning resources, with the focus on digitally mediated piracy practices. The findings suggest a blurring between the legal and the illegal and indicate the normalcy of piracy practices, with nuanced distinctions and understandings manifest.
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    Student practices in copyright culture: Accessing learning resources
    (2016-03-17) Czerniewicz, Laura
    Using Schatzki’s practices framework as a lens, this paper reports on the practices of university students accessing learning resources at a research-intensive university in South Africa. Using a mixed methods approach, 1001 survey responses and six focus groups were analysed to explore how students in three professional disciplines access learning resources, with the focus on digitally-mediated piracy practices. The findings suggest a blurring between the legal and the illegal and indicate the normalcy of piracy practices, with nuanced distinctions and understandings manifest.
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    The effect of technology on copyright
    (2011) Gachago, Mwangi; Ferguson, Steve; Ncube, Caroline
    Copyright and technology have a long and intertwined history during which both have felt their influence on each other. The exclusive rights of reproduction and distribution given to the creators of artistic and literary works today to are very different from what they were 500 years ago when this relationship began. Copyright developed as a direct consequence of the invention of the printing press. Before its invention, the principle protecting author's rights did not exist because the mass reproduction of literary works was not possible. Gutenberg's invention of movable type, however, revolutionised the industry and the stationers in England moved from reproducing single volumes by hand to producing many more copies to match the growing demand resulting in books gaining significant financial value. Value that was difficult to access by the authors of the books until 200 years later when the Statute of Anne, in an effort to encourage the sustained production or original works, granted the authors exclusive rights to their works and started the whole copyright story. Modern national copyright legislation has evolved with different influences throughout history. However, as the world continued to develop and cross border activity flourished national copyright legislation was not sufficient to govern what had become a global concern. International agreements were developed over time that reacted to technologies influence on copyright while at the same time setting the baseline for national copyright legislation to grow around. The Berne Convention remains the most important international agreement on copyright and most national laws and international instruments have developed with reference to it. Following the age of the printing press, the next major technologies to influence copyright were the new recording and broadcast technologies bringing with them, revolutions that forced major shifts in copyright legislation in its efforts to curb infringement. The current digital era poses the biggest challenge copyright legislation has had to face in its history with technology enabling copyright infringements of a scale by far exceeding all other periods combined. A lot of laws and litigation have marked the path leading up to the situation today with many remedies proving ineffective in reversing the scale of copyright infringement. It is time that the copyright industry stopped fighting new technology and realise that their survival might depend on finding new business models that incorporate technologies like P2P networks into their strategies.