Appendix 6 - International Music Council

International airport. Last year authorities conducted about 300 seizures of counterfeit
goods including music dvds worth R220 million 11 .
We need to work continuously and hard to establish our desired culture of voluntary
governance compliance, which can be regarded, in the case of music and other art forms,
as constituting respect for the creative effort of others 12 . In some ways such an attitude is
deduced from our value system and our “culture”, but it can also be
instructive/directional/guiding in that it can change our value system, hopefully for the
better. Lack of compliance is fuelled inter alia by inadequate understanding of the
concept of governance and implementation of governance mechanisms, although here
different cultural views also need to be taken into account. Philosophical tensions do
exist, and with an issue of such complexity, “one size fits all” approaches are not
necessarily appropriate. For example, the Hindu and African views are different to those
of Westerners 13 . After all, intellectual property law is a tool of strong Western states
trying to protect their turf. Less developed states have just had to fall in – as, for example,
in the medicine patent debate 14 . Although Western thinking tends to prevail,
internationally, there is still room to revisit positions and a sensitivity to alternative points
of view which certainly was not found at the height of colonialism. In the meantime,
irrespective of philosophical stances, governance issues in relation to music require
ongoing attention.
11 Information obtained from the South African Revenue Services (SARS).
12 What is being suggested is, of course, not a sort of compliance which would obviously be in conflict with
the promotion of a questioning, creative attitude.
13 The following was gleaned from a Hindu colleague, Dr Chatradari Devroop: “There is an agency that
administers the copyright legislation of Indian media. However, there is a fundamental flaw with the
process in that the issue of protecting one’s rights conflicts with Indian philosophy. Indian philosophy
clearly articulates that we are born into the world with "nothing", except for certain pieces of data we have
brought with us from a previous life. From birth till death the world as we know it provides all our needs -
nourishment, education, religion, etc. We therefore inherit a great deal from Mother Earth. All of these
needs are given without any conditions/ monetary contribution. Generally there is a pool of data that
nobody lays claim to. Upon exit from Earth we do not have the right to lay claim to anything we have
contributed to this pool of needs because we have taken more (from Mother Earth) than we could
possibly give back. Therefore to copyright one’s contributions for monetary gain is in direct conflict with
Indian philosophy”. The African view is related to the underlying sharing principle implied by the
philosophy of Ubuntu – a whole topic for discussion on its own.
14 The current South African Minister of Health’s approach to patent medicine has been notable and along
the lines of “We will ignore patents in order to manufacture generics to save the lives of the poor”.
Interestingly, India is in the forefront of that industry!
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