The debate around intellectual property (IP) rights in Egypt is getting more radically polarized between corporations calling for enforcement and free access supporters. Particularly in media and cultural industries, a severe confrontation is rising between two trends. For both producers and consumers of media, the Egyptian IP law, issued in 2003, is lagging behind while technological advancement is non- stoppable. Free peer to peer file sharing is turning to be the nightmare of creative industries suppliers like music, publishing and cinema. “Digital piracy is a serious problem that endangers the whole media industry. Our revenues decrease by 35% every year and the number of production houses is drastically diminishing," affirms Hazem El Tahawi, manager of IP department in Mazzika corporate for music and media.We fear to engage in new productions. Five years ago, we used to produce 40 albums per year. This year we planned only for ten”, El-Tahawi adds. The USTR intellectual property report placed Egypt among 36 trading partners on its “watch list” for IP violations. The USTR also said that implementation of the trade- related aspects of IP rights (TRIPS) has helped to improve IPR protection worldwide citing Egypt's adoption of a comprehensive intellectual property rights law. Yet, members of the industry question the enforcement of the law: “I believe there is a juridical gap. There is no text that permits to withhold the website that infringed the IP rights and exhibited a material owned by a corporate like us. Maximum punishment is the fine ranging from 40 to 200 thousands L.E.”, El Tahawi depicts. Arab Internet forums and websites displayed fine copies of last summer movies like “Dukkan Shehata” and “Ibrahim El Abyyad”, while they were shown in theatres. Ramadan soaps were also available for download with high quality directly after Ramadan. Needless to say, that music albums get uploaded on internet as soon as they hit the market. Waging copyright wars in Egypt is aggressively accentuating in the last two years. The Egyptian economic court witnesses accusations of violations on daily basis. Mazzika sued the superstar Amr Diab, who worked with the company in the nineties, for using archive material produced by them in a TV program aired last year. El Tahawi asserts that Mazzika is constantly surveying the airing of any of their material on satellite channels and planning to sue all violators whether individuals or companies. Nagla Rizk, associate professor of Economics at AUC who conducts research on digital technologies, IP and economic development, adopts a different logic: “It is impossible to stop the flow of knowledge through P to P sharing by policing and enforcement. The challenge is to find suitable business models and starting to face the reality. Albums become only a reputation device that brings trivial revenues. The consumer has changed and producers must adapt to the digital economy rules”. Rizk presumes that we have to assess not only the economic costs of piracy, but also the economic costs of fighting piracy. She believes that it is more efficient to allocate resources to devising new legal alternatives within flexible IP regimes that would provide a compromise that accommodates the needs of music suppliers and demanders. For regular consumers and internet activists in Egypt, the debate around IP rights pales in comparison to the huge benefits of the free access to digital media. Amr Ezzat, journalist and Egyptian blogger, tells his story with free software use: “All through my studying years in the faculty of engineering, it was unthinkable to buy original software programs for our computers”. Ezzat adds that the university professors would try to justify it saying that the West profited from the Arab knowledge in the past for free. “They argue that we have to catch up with them for development purposes”. El Tahawi from his side refuses to accept piracy as a consequence of the tight economic conditions in Egypt. “If people cannot afford to buy, they do not have to steal. Mercedes cars are expensive too but people do not steal them from the stores. They do not care for the huge losses of the producer”, says El Tahawi. Rizk on the other side distinguishes between private goods and knowledge as a public good that should not be denied free access. “Unlike a private good, the use of a knowledge good by one person does not take away from the enjoyment of another. The challenge is to find ways to compensate the knowledge producer without necessarily putting a price tag on the knowledge good, “says Rizk. Rizk adds that as long as it preserves the moral rights of the creator and avoids plagiarism, digital unauthorized copy remains a non-rivalry good. The challenge is to work out the economic right of the creator. Digital media, for some, promotes a counter-culture where the monopolistic market structures are potentially challenged. In her forthcoming book “Access to knowledge in Egypt”, Rizk, a co-author and co-editor, explains how digital technologies are bringing creators and consumers closer together within novel business models that reduce the role of the middle men as producers for knowledge goods in the digital era. Rizk states that subscription-based and advertisement-supported models are cases in point. Digital technologies have created networks from within consumers (peer to peer music file sharing, social networks) and suppliers (open source music production). Amr Ezzat and other activists support the incorporation of worldly formula like “creative commons” free licenses. He assumes that with such nonprofit corporations it would be easier to share while being consistent with the rules of copyright. “I would pay 100 or 200 L.E. per month to buy a bunch of e-books, movies and good music if such models exist and provide easy service”, says Ezzat. Both parties are engaging in tangible plans to enforce their vision. In January, Mazzika, Microsoft and Arab Radio and Television (ART) corporations are holding a conference under the auspices of the Arab league. The conference calls for a new protocol that enforces the laws of IP protection in the Arab region and allows withholding the violating websites. On the other hand, Rizk is currently establishing the Access to Knowledge for Development (A2K4D) Center at the School of Business at AUC in collaboration with Yale law school. The focus of the center's research will be on the relationship between knowledge, intellectual property and human development, with the purpose of providing Arab policy makers, negotiators and international representatives with well-researched IP alternatives and business models that bring the interests of knowledge producers and users closer within the legal framework.
