Research: Piracy Increases Literacy and Access to Knowledge

[Access_2_Knowledge]

New research published by the African Governance and Development Institute shows that piracy increases literacy and the spread of knowledge. The researchers warn against the adoption of strict anti-piracy policies, but note that not all copyright protection is bad.

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In Western countries piracy is often seen as a leisure tool, granting people unauthorized access to the latest hits and Hollywood blockbusters.

However, there are also parts of the world where piracy is frequently used as a means to gather and spread knowledge. In parts of Africa, for example, where legal access to educational books and software is often restricted or unavailable.

Over the years we have seen various illustrations of the educational importance of piracy in developing countries. When the e-book portal Library.nu was shut down, for instance, we were contacted by a United Nations worker in Kenya, who voiced his disappointment.

“I am very concerned about the recent injunction against library.nu. The site was particularly useful for people like me working in Nairobi, a city that has no more than four bookshops with nothing but bestsellers,” the UN worker informed TF at the time.

In an effort to determine how piracy affects literacy and the spread of knowledge, the African Governance and Development Institute conducted an in-depth study comparing piracy and human development data from 11 African countries.

The findings, presented in a paper titled “The Impact of Software Piracy on Inclusive Human Development: Evidence from Africa” show that “software piracy increases literacy”.

“Adoption of tight IPRs regimes may negatively affect human development by diminishing the literacy rate and restricting diffusion of knowledge,” the authors write.

Not all copyright protection measures have a negative effect though, and the researchers found that is negatively linked to the human development index.

“Adherence to international IPRs protection treaties (laws) may not impede per capita economic prosperity and could improve life-expectancy,” the paper reads.

The paper reports mostly correlational data so it’s not unthinkable that countries where human development is higher have less need to pirate, as there are better alternatives.

The reverse effect could also apply to the literacy findings but according to the researchers this is unlikely. Researcher Simplice Asongu informed TF that his previous work showed a causal effect from piracy on scientific publications.

“I tested the impact of piracy on scientific publications and established a positive causality flowing from the former to the latter,” Asongu says.

From that research, it was concluded that African countries with less copyright restrictions on software will substantially boost the spread of knowledge through scientific and technical publications.

The findings reported here are limited to the effect of software piracy, but it’s not hard to see how book piracy may also positively influence literacy and the spread of knowledge.

In sum, the research suggests that piracy does have its positive sides, especially in terms of human development. Still, it seems unlikely that rights-holders will take that into account when lobbying for new policy changes.

 

[Access_2_Knowledge]

Comments from others:

"...Books are expensive! Even for digital books with virtually no distribution costs books are expensive! Heck I've seen second hand and brand new paperback books cheaper than ebooks and this has got to stop!
In addition to the above cost implications (the cost of books would certainly affect African countries massively) when you do buy a book if it's digital you have less rights than if you were to buy the paperback version!"

"...The way they price ebooks is almost criminal. It's like when the CD first came out and the music labels were saying how music would be cheaper because of it. What great liars they were. They not only made more money per sale than with the vinyl equivalent, they had the balls to jack the price up even higher than necessary.

Ebook publishers/distributors are exactly like them in that respect."


Baadhi ya reactions za watu baada ya Library.nu kufungwa:

"library.nu is of high importance for students and researchers who need rapid access to books specially in countries which the publishers do not sell and offer their books directly."

"does anyone know an alternate site for e-publications?"
"Book Finder (en.bookfi.org) has most of the functionality of library.nu. Might also check out Scribd, AvaxHome, Library Genesis, 4shared, Gigabook, and Bibliotik."
"To get login / password for bibliotik, you should go on torrent-invite, get registered there and ask for an invite."

"The thing that is unique about this is that library.nu offered access to books that were nearly inaccessible through any other means (such as out of print) or were copies of scholarly works that cost hundreds of dollars to purchase through legal avenues.

In a way this is like losing the Library of Alexandria all over again because many of these works will once again be seen by only a handful of people who either have fortunate access to them or the money to buy them.

Perhaps if the book industry decided to make these books (and I'm only talking about scholarly works here in this entire comment) available in a reasonable manner and instead of spending millions of dollars on lawyers just dropped the price of these books so that more people could actually buy them, I'd see that as being reasonable.
However, being able to access scholarly information is now, once again, severely limited. This not only hurts people attempting to do research, but also the authors themselves who will never sell more than a handful of their books.

In fact, many academics used library.nu as well. This was not just a book sharing site for people wanting the latest King novel, but a place where historians and mathematicians could easily gain access to important findings and research (both new, obscure and old) without having to jump through hoops, cut red-tape or spend a ton of their own money to access.

That's why this, above all the recent file sharing losses, is the one that hurts the most. Great research will now linger in a moldy corner of some publishers archive with a $100 price tag attached to it. The information inside will hardly be seen which hurts the author and the end consumer.

Publishers need to start granting access to these works so that most people can reasonably access them and so that they can still afford to do business. People will pay a fair price for good information, but as things stand now the sharing will probably continue."
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"Yes, I would like an invite as well - I'm an academic suffering from this terrible loss of library.nu and badly in need of some consolation."
"I am a senior..I need invitation mail for bitme.org..Could you please send me invitation.?"
"Please, Please Jenna, I beg you to send me an invitation. I am terribly distressed at the closure of library.nu. My email is: heggna@hotmail.com"
"OMG look at all the requests! They're like zombies!"

 

[Access_2_Knowledge]

To update comments from FT.