From the article by Dr Alpana Roy, the concept of copyright law can find its roots in the Western ideas of “private property, authorship and possessive individualism”, which may not be compatible with other cultures, especially those from the “South”. Indeed, this was the premise that Roy had structured his entire piece, where the copyright owners of the “North”, usually former colonizers, continue to oppress the “South”, with quite a number being former colonies but mainly “non-western” countries, through the North’s propagation of their concept of copyright. While this might be the case in the past, with the advancement of many of these Southern countries, today, it might be challenging to conclude so readily that the North still maintains hegemony over the South through the use of copyright.

As noted in Roy’s article, “copyright must not be seen in isolation from issues of access to knowledge, the needs of third world nations and the broad history of colonialism and exploitation”. Indeed, this proposition still holds true today in a number of Southern countries that may not have developed much and still remain dependent on the North for sources of new knowledge in order to better themselves. However, an equally significant number of these Southern countries have grown to be self-reliant and no longer required the “export” of knowledge from the North. Indeed, in modern times, it is no longer the case where information only “flowed” from the North to the Southern countries in which the South required such information to improve themselves. Today, the rise of economic superpowers China and India which were traditionally considered Southern countries is a testament to the fact that the North no longer had a monopoly over the development of new knowledge. Other Southern countries in the list include Japan and Korea, which are both giants in the development of new technologies. It would be a stretch to say that there was a “paucity of technical and scholarly books” in the indigenous languages of these countries. Roy also notes that the “continued use of European languages in the former colonies” is one of the most significant features of neocolonialism. In the same vein, the working language in these countries is the respective local languages, where it is quite possible to live and work in these countries without knowing any other foreign language. In each of these countries, there is no lack of literature dealing with technical and scholarly books in their respective languages, where in fact, Westerners are the ones who need to learn the local languages if they wish to tap into such knowledge. As such, in today’s modern world, it is no longer the case where Western countries have a monopoly over the world’s supply of knowledge and they can no longer oppress the world as copyright owners.

 

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