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Ghana

16 april 2007

Emmanuel Mensah Darkey*

PHOTOCOPY AND EDUCATION IN GHANA

The law of copyright generally grants the creator of an original work of authorship a set of exclusive legal rights to reproduce, distribute, display, or perform the work. These rights are granted to provide enough incentive to create original work. Copyright law is dynamic and it is undergoing many changes to keep pace with current technology.

Recently, Ghana enacted a new copyright act, which is more stringent than the previous one. For example, the act extended the copyright term from 50 years to 70 years. In addition, libraries and archives are treated specially at length in the new act.

‘Libraries may without authorisation make a single copy of a work by reprographic reproduction ....where more copies are required permission must be obtained from the author, publisher or the collective administration society’

‘Permitted use of work protected by copyright does not extend to reproduction in the form of reprography of a whole or of a substantial part of a book’.

Many of us unintentionally infringe copyright law regularly because there is no other alternative and sensible way to access and distribute materials. Notwithstanding the issue of violation of the copyright law, photocopy activities are crucial to the survival and functioning of Institutes of Higher Learning in Ghana. Photocopying keep the educational system functioning and ensures that standards are maintained.

The educational reforms of the late 1980’s in Ghana have led to vast increases in the number of students entering the Universities. However, these increases are not matched with the necessary funding. As a result, there is inadequate supply of textbooks, journals and other teaching and learning materials. This situation has resulted in students, lecturers and librarians photocopying completely valuable books and journals that are actually needed for courses but are no longer in print or are too expensive for students or budgets of most libraries.

Not long ago, the Reprographic Rights Organisation of Ghana (CopyGhana) reported in the Daily Graphic of Thursday December 1, 2005 that mass photocopying of literary materials on the Campuses of Tertiary Institutions in the absence of any agreement is illegal.

In a research that I am currently conducting on copyright and information provision issues, I can count more than 100 commercial photocopy centres on the main campus of the University of Ghana alone.

Some of the comments I received from respondents interviewed on the violation of copyright laws through photocopying were mainly based on:

Unavailability of textbooks and the high cost of textbooks.

Others also said that, the long process of getting permission from authors would delay their study.

Yet others insisted that they were not abusing the copyright law because they were using

the materials:

To acquire knowledge or

not for commercial purposes or that

authors also benefited from the work of others

Few others also maintained that, copyright law, more especially the duration of copyright, is not in consonance with natural justice therefore it cannot be sustained.

To support some of these arguments, I can state that in my own Library; Faculty of Law Library, University of Ghana, Legon. We depend largely on photocopying to source academic materials. For example an essential learning text for first year law students: A sourcebook of the constitutional law of Ghana by Gyandoh, S Jnr and Griffiths J. is completely out of print. The Library now relies on a photocopied version obtained from Northwestern University Law School, Chicago.

Other essential texts some written by local authors are not only expensive but also not available for purchase. A book written by a Ghanaian author but published outside the country (Modern Principles of equity: an exposition with particular reference to Ghana by Kludze, A.K.) costs One million, two hundred thousand cedis (¢1,200,000.00) or ($129.00). This is indeed a big amount of money out of the reach of many students. This same book when photocopied costs only sixty-three thousand cedis (¢63,000.) It is therefore not surprising that many students would prefer to photocopy the book than to buy it.

By courtesy of Raoul Wallenberg Institute (RWI) my library now has access to Human Rights Quarterly (HRQ) Online but we are told that access to HRQ is not perpetual; for now, we will have access to the Journal for 2007.

We in the global south are used to own a particular copy of a book and to display it on shelves for users to have access to that copy. With the new technologies and copyright, we will be effectively denied ownership of materials for users to have perpetual access.

* Assistant Librarian, Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana

emdarkey@ug.edu.gh