Category: Copyright

The UAE issued late last year a new copyright law as part of its sweeping legal reform in celebration of its 50th national day. A quick glance over the new law might make it initially seem like a word for word reproduction of the previous UAE Copyright Law of 2002—and that is true to a great degree, but there are several significant specific changes in the new UAE Copyright Law of 2021 that are worth considering.

The Creative Commons announced yesterday the release of the official Arabic translation of v 4.0 of the Creative Commons licence suite. I was fortunate to be a member of the translation team and I would like to share some of the lessons we learnt from doing this project.
The Creative Commons licences are legal tools that allow creators and content owners to legally make their works available for use and remixing in a way that overcomes the restrictions imposed on culture by copyright law. The Creative Commons has transformed the way creative works are legally shared as there today over a billion works licensed under Creative Commons and which can be legally downloaded and shared from platforms such as Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, and others. The international Creative Commons licences became available in Arabic only now, but there are already many Arabic language websites that use them including official government websites, such as Al-Meezan by the Government of Qatar, as well as non-governmental websites, such as 7iber in Jordan.

Even though a previous version of the Creative Commons licenses (v 3.0) had an Egyptian adaptation that was available in Arabic, this new Arabic translation is the first global Arabic language Creative Commons licence that is not tied to a specific jurisdiction. The need to make this Arabic translation universal made this project extremely challenging as there are 17 different Arabic-language copyright laws in the Arab World that use different terminologies for even the most basic copyright concepts. For example, the term ‘copyright work’ translates to مصنف (Musannaf) in some countries and to عمل (Ammal) in others. The same goes for other core copyright terms such as originality, reproduction, adaptation, and circumvention.

Fortunately, Arabic is one of the official languages of the United Nations, which means that international copyright treaties are adopted in Arabic. The existence of an Arabic text of an international nature provided us with a neutral authority that we can rely upon in choosing the most appropriate term for our translation. Therefore, we relied upon the text of the Berne Convention, the WCT, the Marrakesh VIP Treaty, and the Beijing Treaty as our primary authority for translating copyright terms. For terms that we could not find in these treaties, we looked at the 17 different copyright laws available in the Arab World and considered the frequency of how often a term appeared as the basis for choosing one over another.

This approach provided us with a systematic approach to translation, but it was not very easy to follow. The Arabic text of the international copyright treaties is not consistent. For example, the term ‘reproduce’ is translated as  نسخ (naskh) in Berne, Marrakesh, and Beijing, but as استنساخ (istinsakh) in the WCT, the term ‘distribute’ is translated as يوزع  (yuwazzi’) in the WCT, Marrakesh, and Beijing, but as تداول (tadawul) in Berne, and the term ‘circumvent’ is translated as تحايل (Tahayul) in the WCT and Beijing, but as تفادي (Tafadi) in Marrakesh. In some cases, there was no consistency even within the same treaty. In cases where a most commonly used term could not be identified, the translation team voted on the most favoured term and consistently used it in the translation.

Something that I found extremely interesting during this project is that certain extremely significant copyright concepts do not have a common label to identify them at all in Arabic. For example, the right of integrity, which is a right that is found in practically all Arab copyright laws, is not explicitly named as such in any of these laws except one. This probably because there is, in fact, no formal one-word label for this concept even in the Berne Convention. The Marrakesh VIP Treaty does mention this right as such, and translates it as حصانة (Hasannah), however, the majority of the members of the translation team did not feel that term would be understood as such in Arabic, and instead used the only reference found for it in a domestic Arabic copyright law (Algeria) which is سلامة (Salama).

Translating the Creative Commons into Arabic was a fun and engaging exercise, and it taught us, the contributors to the translation project, something new about the way copyright laws are drafted differently across the region.

Unlike patents and trade marks, copyright works do not need to be registered to acquire protection in Oman. However, the government still provides a mechanism for registration to those who wish to do so. This does not grant those who register with any special legal rights, but, in theory at least, it can provide additional evidence in case the ownership or the existence of a work is contested. Once or twice a year, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MOCI) publishes in the Official Gazette the details of the works that have been deposited for copyright registration. In 2016, MOCI published only one list in Official Gazette issue no 1158. I took a look at this list to see how many works were registered this year, by who, and for what kind of works.

The Arab Copyright Treaty [الاتفاقية العربية لحماية حقوق المؤلف] of 1981 is an old international copyright treaty that nobody seems to take seriously in the Arab World and which was recently updated through a the Modified Arab Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Treaty [الاتفاقية العربية لحماية حقوق المؤلف والحقوق المجاورة], but it seems that nobody has noticed this at all. I recently discovered that Qatar formally acceded to this Treaty, so I thought I’ll write a little bit about it.

According to the National Centre of Statistics and Information, there are more than 60,000 persons with disabilities in Oman. 30% of these persons have a sight related disability which means that they cannot easily read written materials. According to the World Blind Union, only 7% of all the books published in the world are available in formats accessible to the visually impaired, such as Braille – and you can bet that in Oman not even 1% of the books available in the country are accessible in such formats.
Technology can provide the visually impaired with numerous opportunities to access to books. It is possible to use screen reader technology to read aloud any text on a computer screen to a blind person or to convert it into refreshable Braille display. This is not only usually economically cheaper than producing a standard Braille version, but it is more practical because traditionally accessible books are heavy and massive in size in comparison to printed books.

However, even though technology can help make books accessible, the Omani Copyright Law makes it an act of copyright infringement for someone to convert a printed book into a format accessible to a visually impaired person if the permission of the author is not acquired. Oman is an extremely small market and it does not make economic sense for publishers to produce and market accessible formats of their books to blind users in Oman. The Omani Copyright Law is probably the most restrictive Copyright Law in the entire Arab World because it does not even allow users to make private copies of protected works for their personal use for any purpose – even if making this copy is necessary for a blind person to read. To make things worse, the Omani Copyright Law allows copyright owners to impose technological protection measures (TPMs) that can stop a blind person from using applications such as screen readers without the permission of the author. If a user circumvents the technological protection measures, he will be in violation of the law irrespective of the purpose for circumvention.

The international community has made serious efforts in recent years to help persons with disabilities overcome the restrictions imposed by copyright. This has led to the adoption of the Marrakesh Treaty for the Visually Impaired. This treaty makes it an obligation on States to include exceptions in their copyright laws that enable the visually impaired to have access to copyright protected works, but unfortunately Oman is yet to accede to this treaty. It is also not clear if Oman can actually join this treaty at all because the Free Trade Agreement Oman signed with the USA greatly limits the way Oman can modify its copyright law. For example, Marrakesh Treaty requires States to make sure that technological protection measures do not stop the visually impaired from using copyright exceptions, but the Free Trade Agreement with the USA puts restrictions on the extent to which Oman may permit the circumvention of technological protection measures which may be in violations of the Marrakesh Treaty.

The unfairness of the Omani Copyright Law towards disabled persons is not only morally wrong, but it could also be seen as a violation of the human rights of disabled persons. Oman is a party to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which requires Oman to ensure that disabled persons enjoy the right to education and the right to participate in culture without discrimination. The Omani Copyright Law is lacking on different fronts, but its failure to support disabled persons is a glaring problem that needs to be addressed immediately.