ZIMBABWE International Book Fair Association (Zibfa) interim chairperson Blazio Tafireyi on Tuesday said stakeholders in the book industry had finalised drafting the Anti-Book Piracy petition, which they would hand over to Parliament as they seek support to curb the piracy cancer in the country.
BY WINSTONE ANTONIO
Over the past years, authors and publishers have lost thousands of dollars in revenue as book pirates ripped them off through reproducing copyrighted books and selling them for a song.
Tafireyi told NewsDay that the petition would be handed over to the Legislature soon after the forthcoming 2016 edition of the ZIBF scheduled to run from July 25 to 30 under the theme Igniting Interest in Reading for Sustainable Development in Harare.
“The Anti-Book Piracy draft petition is now under the consultative process where stakeholders are refining it and will be handed to the Parliament of Zimbabwe after the Zimbabwe International Book Fair,” Tafireyi said.
“After drafting the petition, we want to make sure we have a solid document that would help us in our bid to get rid of proliferating book piracy since if we remain silent, no one will take action.”
Tafireyi described the scourge of book piracy as organised crime involving former book publishers who lost their jobs in the wake of the widespread company closures that occurred last year.
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The Anti-Book Piracy petition would be the first of its kind by stakeholders in the book industry in Zimbabwe.
ZIBF has since September 2013 ran several anti-piracy programmes targeting writers, publishers, booksellers, librarians and printers, but the efforts failed to produce desired results.
Tafireyi said there was need to address piracy through an efficient, effective and integrated alternative business model that kills piracy from a business point of view through a structure that is multi-layered and multi-functional.
“A programme of information and advocacy to generate national awareness of the issue of book piracy is urgently needed,” he said.
Lack of co-ordinated efforts in fighting book piracy has seen some authors, including Rabison Shumba, going to the streets and confiscating photocopies of their books from errant vendors.
