Publishers’ association of south africa

FACTORS INHIBITING ECONOMIC GROWTH

HIGH LEVELS OF ILLEGAL AND UNCOMPENSATED COPYING have a debilitating effect on the health of the industry sector and cause a serious downward drag on expansion and growth.

The Impact of Illegal Copying on Economic Growth

The impact of illegal copying on the economic effectiveness of the publishing industry is compounded by the fact that economies of scale, through longer print runs, have a dramatic effect on price in the print industries. Publishers need to amortise pre-press costs (design, editing and typesetting) incurred before printing can start and printers incur high set-up costs for every print run. As a result, longer print runs have a dramatic effect in reducing price.

The South African book market is predominantly a short-run market, because of a combination of low reading and book purchasing levels and high levels of illegal copying. A US publisher would regard a print run of 10 000 copies as the lower end of financial viability. By comparison, in South Africa, only some widely-prescribed school textbooks are likely to reach this level of annual sales; relatively few books sell more than 5 000 copies a year, while annual sales of under 1 000 are common. This means that books are more expensive than they would be were there higher levels of purchase. As an example, the price of a book that sells under 1 000 copies a year would halve if the publisher could sell between 5 000 and 10 000 copies a year. Moreover, the book price, in these higher print runs, is very often cheaper than the cost of photocopying.
These examples demonstrate that the losses incurred through excessive copying are not just losses to the industry, but that illegal copying has a knock-on effect that can push book prices upwards, impacting negatively on buying patterns and educational budgets.
South African publishers currently feel that deficiencies in provisions for enforcement in South Africa copyright legislation hamper their efforts to enforce the rights of their authors. Also of concern are shortcomings in the criminal justice system, where there seems to be little awareness of the importance of intellectual property protection among police and prosecutors and there is insufficient capacity for the prosecution of criminal cases. Penalties for copyright infringement are regarded as insufficient and the print industries sector would like to see the introduction of statutory damages, both as compensation for plaintiffs and as a deterrent for offenders.
Copyright Observance
The issues that face rights holders in the print industry sector, from authors through to booksellers, include the lack of a reading culture; the lack of respect for copyright; a failure to realise the value of knowledge products; and a sense of entitlement which assumes that information should be available free of charge.
That the provisions of the Copyright Act are often ignored in educational institutions, in administrative offices, in companies and, indeed, throughout society, is not unique to South Africa, or even unusual. The ideal situation, from the point of view of authors and publishers, would be an effective legal system and a mature licensing system operating in all these spheres, such as exist, for example, in the Scandinavian countries, Canada and Australia, where intellectual property is respected and public awareness is high. That situation, however, is a long-term objective. In the meantime, rights owners’ urgent concern is with the education and academic sectors, for that is where their heaviest losses are incurred.
Copyright Infringement in South Africa
Copyright infringement in South Africa is not a matter – at least not yet -- of the mass piracy of trade books, like the pirated editions of Harry Potter titles that have appeared internationally, but of systematic copying of various kinds in the educational sector, public sector and businesses. While piracy of this kind of DVDs being imported into South Africa is causing concern to international rights holders like the IIPA, popular books have not been the targets of similar piracy.