Getting Primed in the Language of Copyright

Copyright law has since long been one of the most prominent cornerstones of intellectual property regime worldwide. However, while there already exist a large amount of literature and scholarly work regarding that discipline, few have cared till date to make an effort of conveying the basic features of copyright law to the mass populace at large. In an attempt to fill the said void, the Copysouth Research Group has recently published a copyright primer in September, 2009. The book, titled “An alternative primer on national and international copyright law in the global South: eighteen questions and answers”, has been penned by Alan Story (who is a teacher of intellectual property law at Kent Law School in the United Kingdom) and aims to answer questions such as what are the so-called basic nuts and bolts and traps and dead ends of copyright law, who is the owner of the copyright over a work, what are rights that users of copyright have and what functions do international copyright conventions perform to serve the interest of the global populace and so on and so forth. While the primer is bound to be helpful to a lawyer seeking a quick review of the basic features of copyright law, the audience it primarily targets include people like librarians, musicians, readers, information activists, students, and others who want to know how the copyright system actually works in practice in a Latin American, African, or Asian country. Consisting of 64 pages of straightforward writing shorn of undue legal complexities, the book may not secure the top rank in the list of the literature suggested by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), but it promises to be quite a useful tool to get acquainted with the basic knowledge pertaining copyright. Translations of the book in Spanish and Portugese languages will be available soon within the next 6 months. At present, the primer can be downloaded from here.