some guy in lebanon

By Yours Truly, Published in the Daily Star on December 24th, 2008 – Click here to see original

BEIRUT: The Education’s Ministry decision to make intellectual property rights (IPR) the theme of its SchoolNet project in 2009 highlights the growing prioritization of anti-piracy initiatives in Lebanon. Education Minister Bahia Hariri delivered a speech to a workshop on Monday in Beirut, highlighting the need for a cultural shift, beginning with young people, in Lebanon’s attitude toward intellectual property rights and violations. The workshop kicked off this year’s SchoolNet initiative, entitled, “Intellectual Property Rights: Duty or Necessity?”

The initiative will teach students about the inherent consequences, both individual and systemic, that arise when Lebanese consumers and businesses violate intellectual property rights by buying pirated software, music, movies, print material, and other trademarked products.

The Education Ministry’s initiative also aims to educate students about the struggle to end Lebanon’s unfortunate reputation as one of the world’s most flagrant violators of intellectual property rights, trademarks, and copyrights.

Lebanon’s accession to the World Trade Organization hangs to a significant extent on the country’s ability to improve its reputation and record on intellectual property rights. Combined legislative and enforcement efforts by government, non-government, and corporate entities brought recognition this year, as the United States upgraded Lebanon’s status from “Priority Watch List” to “Watch List.” The country’s previous status had threatened its lucrative trade relationship with the United States.

Those efforts notwithstanding, Hariri raised the question of complicity at Monday’s workshop, asking: “Should we bring our children to account for not respecting intellectual property rights when they did not even learn about these rights in school? Can education about intellectual property rights be more effective than [only] strict implementation of laws?”

Many of those individuals and organizations that are working to increase awareness of, and to strengthen, intellectual-property legislation and enforcement were on hand at Monday’s workshop at the UNESCO building.

“Educating consumers and businesses about the importance of intellectual property and how they can benefit from acting within the law is key, along with proper enforcement,” Aly Harakeh, a Microsoft Lebanon executive, told The Daily Star.

The Education Ministry and the Schoolnet Initiative have historically worked closely with Microsoft Lebanon. Because of Microsoft’s involvement with digital intellectual property enforcement in the Levant, this year that relationship is especially important.

Also attending the SchoolNet workshop was Pierre al-Khoury, representing the Commercial Law Strengthening Project, whose Lebanese component is specifically focused upon intellectual property law. The project stretches across four nations in the Middle East: Lebanon, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates (specifically Dubai), and Yemen.

Khoury told The Daily Star that “intellectual property law is something new in Lebanon … [few] know about it. The problem is that the enforcement of law is not applicable – you can go out on the street and buy any software for, say, LL1,000.”

Asked about socially engrained cultural challenges, he said: “When there are campaigns highlighting this issue, talking about intellectual property on television and on the radio, it’s easy to make the point.”

The Brand Protection Group (BPG) initiated two such campaigns over the past five years, both with considerable success.

These campaigns followed a 2003-04 BPG study that found brand counterfeiting led to an annual loss of as much as $100 million loss to the Lebanese Treasury. This study seemed to at least partly validate Microsoft’s assertion to The Daily Star that intellectual property violations and piracy accounted for an annual $1 billion loss to the Lebanese economy.

The BPG’s conclusion was that “the negative impact is on all [Lebanese], and therefore all [Lebanese] should bear the responsibility of fighting this phenomenon.”

In 2005 and 2007, the BPG organized hotline call centers, advertising campaigns, and press releases to highlight the importance of reporting the sale of, and the refusal to purchase, counterfeit consumer products.

Post-campaign studies showed a considerable drop in Lebanese apathy toward intellectual property violations, validating Khoury’s theory that the Lebanese people are not culturally immune to respecting copyrights and trademarks.

Harakeh and Khoury agreed that, following the BPG’s campaigns, there has been a “change in perception.”

The widespread availability of pirated brands and software, and limited government action to combat their illicit sale – usually in broad daylight – is at the heart of Lebanon’s poor track record with intellectual property violations.

However, Khoury did tell The Daily Star that there are four separate pieces of legislation in Parliament to strengthen intellectual property rights, though Harakeh pointed out that “without enforcement, this will not be enough.”

But whether the parliamentary elections scheduled for the spring of 2009 will prevent timely consideration of such legislation is difficult to predict.

Kawkab Sinno, chair of the Brand Protection Group’s government relations committee, told The Daily Star that “serious Lebanese homegrown companies are aware of the importance of IPR protection for their innovation and brand names in Lebanon and outside the country. But first they need to respect the IPR protection given to other well-known names and there should be better government enforcement in this category of products and innovation.”

On the subject of enforcement, Harakeh said that Microsoft recently brought legal action against a Lebanese engineering firm whose profits were in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and whose 80 or more office computers allegedly lacked a single genuine license for their software.

Harakeh used this story to demonstrate that the reasons for software piracy among Lebanese businesses are not always related to cost, but rather willful, or at least apathetic, non-compliance.

Yahia Ramadan, a liaison for Microsoft’s attorney, confirmed to The Daily Star that he had participated in a raid on the allegedly offending engineering company with the Cyber Crime Unit of the Internal Security Forces.

A decision on the case is still pending, although Microsoft won a conviction in a similar case in 2003.