Abu Dhabi is rapidly becoming the hub of the Arab book trade and the point of reference for booksellers, publishers and distributors in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region.

 

The Abu Dhabi International Book Fair offers the best access to industry professionals and key market players in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2009, 637 publishers from 52 countries presented books in Arabic, English, various Indian languages, French, German, Chinese and many other tongues. With more than 500,000 titles on display each year, the possibility for new business opportunities is endless.

 

The 2010 professional programme introduced a number of new initiatives such as targeted matchmaking for agents, international publishers and distributors. KITAB also offers guided tours for first timers at the fair.

 

In 2009, over 200 letters of intent for subsidised licensing deals were signed under the ‘Spotlight on Rights’ scheme, which will continue for two more years. The subsidies fund the translation of texts to and from the Arabic language as well as financing rights agreements across national borders within the Arab world.

 

Other programmes focus on the future, with seminars on digital publishing and the two-day ‘Education Chapter’, a comprehensive conference including a collection of presentations and workshops. KITAB offers market presentation of the UAE and other Gulf countries for educational publishers who are interested in step into the market with very high potential for English language titles.

Development in Abu Dhabi is moving quickly. Major governmental initiatives include substantial investments in culture, and key issues among these are reading and literacy. With culture comes tolerance, and Abu Dhabi is known throughout the region for its commitment to rule of law, lack of censorship and open-minded multicultural intellectual exchange.

 

The Abu Dhabi International Book Fair is no doubt the most professional fair of its kind in the Arab World, but don’t let that fool you into thinking we’re all business—the 2010 ADIBF also offers a full six-day programme of cultural events that include author readings, panel discussions, book signings, poetry, live music and more! All events are open to the public and professionals free of charge. 

   

Click here to register as exhibitor or trade visitor!

 

Copyright is a success story. Today, at a rough personal guess, more than 600,000 titles are published around the world every year. Nobody doubts that this proliferation is a consequence of two forces: the emergence of an educated middle class able and willing to pay for books, and the development of copyright as a tool to incentivise creators and their publishers to create and offer more and more books.

 

The Internet appears to bring this era to a close. Copying, distribution and the availability of information is virtually free. Access to knowledge appears synonymous to access to the Internet. Wikipedia has demonstrated that quality content can be created collaboratively without commercial agents. And business models that provide consumers with free access seem to ensure that all, rich and poor, can have access to education and knowledge.

 

Beating the copyright industries has become a popular sport, as any newspaper publisher can testify. The facile advice from all directions is that copyright industries must “understand” the Internet, learn to “monetise eyeballs” and “stop being so backward”.

So are publishers who continue to ask for copyright protection and who seek to sell their content to consumers like king Canute, ordering the ocean tides to stop coming in?

 

Let’s look at the arguments against copyright in more detail. Firstly, is access to knowledge really only a question of connectivity? Even if we leave aside the obvious and towering barriers to knowledge, which include illiteracy, functional illiteracy and the language barrier, and assuming that there is cheap Internet access available , a vast amount of information available on the Internet remains inaccessible. That is because access to knowledge is not about something being available on the Internet. Access to knowledge is about making information available in a form that is appropriate and useful in a particular context. For example, the information that a diabetes sufferer needs in a private clinic in the US is very different than what she may need in a particular rural area of, say, a sub-Saharan country. The cultural context makes a decisive difference regarding what foods are available, what attitudes prevail towards such a disease, the customs and traditions that can be tapped into to address the health concern. The question is therefore not “how can we make all information accessible”, but “how can we make all information useful”. The latter requires an agent who can transform information into knowledge. Historically that has been the domain of the author and publisher.

 

But even if an agent is needed, can’t this be done on a voluntary basis, can’t social media replace the business of editing and publishing? Wikipedia clearly demonstrates that collaborative projects can substitute for some commercial products. Publishers have also been pushed out of other publishing niches, where in retrospect the “added value” of the publishers was easily provided by the Internet. A brief look at Wikibooks. It is possible to string together correct information in a single place. But without the narrative, without clarity about for whom the book is intended, the information becomes bland, static and of limited utility. A book on acoustics, for example, must be different if it is addressing a physics student, a hi-fi enthusiast, an engineer or a child. It is better to have ten books each competing for a different audience, or the same audience using different styles, than to try to address all with only one book. Variety and competition create utility and excellence. This remains true in many areas including in particular education, health information and most areas of non-fiction. Fiction of course can be created collectively, but the added value that comes from collaboration comes at the expense of originality and the unique hallmark given by an individual author, a trade-off that mostly does not work.

 

The 60,0000 titles published today are not enough. They do certainly not meet the needs of developing countries, with their plethora of languages, their broad diversity of cultural contexts and developmental challenges. We need more books and they must come from the developing countries themselves. Collaborative and government-paid projects will help, but the mechanism of demand-driven development brings the diversity, the innovation and the competition that is needed to serve the world’s readers best. The role of copyright in this field will be highlighted in the IPA Copyright Symposium in a number of sessions.

Jens Bammel, Secretary General, International Publishers Association

Francis Gurry, the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, is not new to intellectual property. A career UN civil servant he has been with WIPO since 24 years. Still, far from being a technocrat, Francis understands the greater framework of copyright in promoting culture and creativity.

 

The following is an excerpt of his first report given at the WIPO General Assemblies at the end of his first year at the helm of WIPO in September 2009.

 

“A … area of specific concern is the future of copyright in the digital environment. We are witnessing the migration of most, if not all, forms of cultural expression to digital technology and the Internet – music, film, news content, literature and broadcasts of cultural and sporting events. New forms of cultural expression are also emerging. User generated content abounds. YouTube reports, for example, that 10 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

 

None of these transformations is inherently good or bad. They are, however, fundamental and they do signal a challenge for the institution of copyright. The objective of that institution is clear: to provide a market-based mechanism that extracts some value from cultural transactions so as to enable creators to lead a dignified economic existence while, at the same time, ensuring the widest possible availability of affordable creative content.

 

I am not sure that the impact of these tumultuous developments in digital technology can be dealt with by way of negotiation of individual issues in one of our Standing Committees. The developments are too fundamental. They concern a question of major importance to the whole world, which it is not an exaggeration to characterize as the financing of culture in the 21^st Century.

The structural changes in the distribution and enjoyment of creative works have, as I mentioned, given rise to a level of disregard for intellectual property that is unprecedented. There is a widespread perception that lack of respect for intellectual property is a North-South problem. I do not believe that this is the case. It should be apparent from what I have said about copyright in the digital environment that I consider piracy to be a structural or conceptual problem and a global challenge, not a North-South battle. I do not believe that it is any different for physical goods. Counterfeiting is not a North-South problem, but a problem of globalization - of open markets, good transportation systems and the free movement of persons, goods and capital …

 

Let me conclude by referring to WIPO and intellectual property in the broader global agenda. We have, as an Organization, set a new objective of engagement with global policy issues. Following the entry into force of the Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons, a Stakeholders’ Platform has been established and a treaty proposal has been tabled on access to published works on the part of the visually impaired. But perhaps the most important public policy issue of all is now arising for discussion, namely, the challenge of climate change.

 

There is a perception that intellectual property may be a negative influence in the range of policy initiatives that are needed to deal with climate change. I do not believe that this perception corresponds to reality. It is generally recognized that technological innovation will be central to global efforts to deal with the challenges associated with climate change. It is also coming to be recognized that this innovation will be needed across the whole infrastructure of the economy to give that infrastructure ultimately a carbon- free or carbon-neutral character. In this context, it is difficult to imagine how a property right on an individual piece of technology could constitute an obstacle. On the contrary, intellectual property as a systemic stimulus to the creation and diffusion of technology has a very positive contribution to make to our efforts to develop green innovation. It will assist the economy to adjust by favouring investment in green innovation. Some countries have started to use intellectual property in a dynamic way to favour desired outcomes by creating fast-track channels for processing green innovations. Much more is possible.