Hi Ken and friends,
Well, my names are
Remmy Nweke, I am a senior reporter on ICT with Daily Champion,
Lagos-Nigeria.
To open the
debate, we can try to answer the following questions:
- To what extent does the development
of information technologies (and to put it short, the emergence of the
information society) impact the traditional concept of IPR? What are
the consequences?
I think the
impact of traditional concept of IPR is gradually dying off the
consequences include that we will eventually have a 'free' society that
is not being check mated unnecessary and placed on the shoulder of the
highest bidder or who can afford, thus making information flow freely
to an extent, because some information/innovatiion etc are still under
key. And I think they would continue to be so for the likes of Open
Source to thrive, even though it seems free in the sense that it helps
to cut cost.
- Which are the specific issues of
IPR (copyright, patents, etc.) for Africa, in the information society?
How to face these issues?
The specific
issues for IPR on the continent should be the patents of its own
products, while copyright education must take its rightly space in the
scheme of things. Patent must be dealt with in a way to maximally
benefit Africa among other Least Developed Countries (LDCs) for them to
make some in roads.
- Are the international legal
instruments that are being put in place to protect IPR good for Africa?
As of today, I
do not know of any legal instruments that are being put in place to
protect IPR good for Africa specifically, but itis very relevant and
one must be established, even if it is a commission for IPR on Africa
via AU or NEPAD to facilitate the kind of development we look up to.
I don't know of
any African copyright owner who have the guts for now to go to court on
the continent for an IPR issue(s) and even if, what kind of judiciary
system do we have in place to address this,especially in the books.
- Are the African legal instruments
developed in this field favourable to African interests?
This brings us to the issues I
raised above and I think the answer for now is simply NO and that is
more reason we need to develop evenly within our very own scopes of the
system,too much gap would worsen the situation.
- etc.
Feel free to raise
other general issues and do not hesitate to share with us your concrete
experiences
Ken LOHENTO
CIPACO Coordinator, Week 1 moderator
--
Ken
Lohento
Coordinator
of the Centre for International ICT Policies
Central
and West Africa (CIPACO)
Panos
Institute West Africa (PIWA) - ICT Programme
6,
rue Calmette BP 21 132
Dakar
Ponty - Senegal
Tel.:
+221 849 16 65
www.cipaco.org
www.panos-ao.org