Cycling on the Rajpath toward India Gate in New Delhi. Image – Getty iStockphoto: LSP 1982
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
International Registration and Participation Is Open
As many Publishing Perspectives professional industry readers know, World Book Day, which falls this year on Saturday (April 23) is actually named World Book and Copyright Day, a UNESCO-based observance in place since 1995.
This year, UNESCO is asking its partners to stress “that books are a force to address contemporary challenges, to understand political and economic realities, and to combat inequalities and misinformation.” Add disinformation to that last point, too—the weaponized form of misinformation. Disinformation is a deliberate effort to mislead with wrongful communications, and it’s a rapidly growing problem, particularly in an age of various social media.
In New Delhi, the Federation of Indian Publishers has announced a half-day online conference for Saturday, in association with the Indian Reprographic Rights Organization, a program aimed at examining and exposing vulnerabilities in the protection of intellectual property.
While many international observances focus on the “World Book Day” abbreviation of the annual context, the program being produced in New Delhi will have its emphasis on the copyright factor and on the crucial importance to the world industry of healthy copyright frameworks in national markets.
Hosted on the PragatiE platform, the event has engaged the assistance of M/S Ajay Sahni & Associates, a New Delhi-based law firm focused on intellectual property.
World publishing players are invited to register for this free event and to participate in its session, which is supported by the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFFRO) and the International Publishers Association (IPA). Also involved is the Delhi-based Afro-Asian Book Council.
Speakers familiar to many in the international publishing arena include Caroline Morgan, CEO and secretary general of IFFRO, and Andre Breedt, managing director of Nielsen BookData.
Registration is here.
Programming Highlights
Saturday’s program is built in four sessions, following a 30-minute welcome at 12:30 IST (India Standard Time).
All times listed here are IST, which is GMT + 5 hours and 30 minutes.
1 p.m. Transforming the Role of Intellectual Property in the Era of Technology
- Chair: Arul George Scaria, Delhi’s National Law University and the Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Competition
- Ravi Shankar Jha, WinZO Games
- Manan Bhatt, Atal Incubation Centre, Gujarat University Startup and Entrepreneurship Council
- Kapil Gupta, PragatiE and Frontlist
- Christoffer Rosenholm, iDenfendo Sweden
2 p.m. Copyright and Artificial Intelligence
- Chair: Rishabh Sinha, FloBiz
- James Mimikos, Greek Indian Business Association
- Utpal Chakraborty, Allied Digital Services and Yes Bank
- Shrey Gupta, Ajay Sahni Associates
- Ankit Sahni, Ajay Sahni Associates
3 p.m. Copyright and the Education Sector
- Chair: Girish Srivastava, Indian Broadcasting Foundation, DPAG Consulting
- Jagdish Swaroop, former deputy registrar of copyright for the Indian government
- Caroline Morgan, IFRRO
- Vikrant Mathur, Nielsen BookData for India and GCC Countries
- Pranav Gupta, IRRO and the Federation of Indian Publishers
4 p.m. Monetization of Intellectual Assets [for] a Sustainable Business
- Chair: BP Singh, Intellectual Property Appellate Board
- Pragya Chaturvedi, UK High Commission, Delhi
- Anvesha Kumar, Tata Medical and Diagnostics
- Andre Breedt, Nielsen BookData
- Rahul Goel, Anant Law
Reprographic Rights Organizations
Last month, we had news about the formation of what is probably the world’s newest reprographic rights organization, the Emirates Reprographic Rights Management Association in the United Arab Emirates.
Reprographic or reproduction rights organizations may be among the least familiar parts of the world copyright community for laypeople. Even in publishing circles, there are many who aren’t well-versed in what these agencies are and do. Those in educational publishing are likelier to be aware of them because educational settings can be in many cases the ones in which reproduction of content is most common.
Reprography—facsimile reproduction, such as photocopying—is among the most common forms of reproduction that’s at issue for publishers and authors. In addition to RROs, another type of agency, CCMOs, or collective copyright management organizations, may also be in play when it comes to collecting the copyright fees that must be paid to publishers and/or authors when their copyrighted content is copied.
Reprographic rights organizations—called RROs in the acronym-laden intellectual property industry—are mandated to collectively manage copyright protection of content either through voluntary private agreements (in which a publisher might arrange such services) or as a result of a legal licensing system created by local law.
The overall thrust of Saturday’s World Book and Copyright Day event from Delhi is education. As critical as copyright is to publishing–particularly in an age of easy reprographic and distribution means–many in the publishing world are slow to realize the importance of knowing and understanding their own rights and vulnerabilities. At issue, as the organizers of the event say, are “steps that should be taken to prevent copyright [infringement].”
More from Publishing Perspectives on copyright is here, more on reprographic rights organizations is here, and more on the Indian market is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the world media partner of the International Publishers Association.
More from us on the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international book publishing is here.