Saturday, November 14, 2009

Lawless Liberia

My undergraduate dissertation examined the negative impact an over expansive and ever expanding international copyright legal regime could have on Countries of the South. I was quite the idealist lefty back then and viewed international law a neo-imperialist tool in a post colonial world. But even then I never imagined that copyright laws could be used in so ridiculous and destructive a manner as has recently been the case Liberia. Foreign Policy magazine reports:

Six years after a civil war that killed 250,000 and displaced hundreds of thousands more, justice is at the top of Liberia's list of needs. But in this small West African country of 3.5 million, the problem isn't a lack of courtrooms or trained lawyers. Liberia is wanting for the actual laws themselves. The country's legal code doesn't exist in print except for a few mismatched volumes here and there, sequestered in incomplete sets in libraries in the capital, Monrovia. And right now, as far as legal advocates can tell, even Liberia's national parliament doesn't have a full copy of the law.

Why not? Because the few volumes that do exist have been quietly copyrighted -- and subsequently held ransom -- by the man in charge of Liberia's legal reform. Across the country, lawyers, courtrooms, and even the government are operating blindly; it's impossible to be certain if they are following a legal code they don't have.

The man who has literally taken the law into his own hands is Philip Banks, appointed by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as chair of the country's law reform commission.

Defending himself in an interview with FP on Oct.27, Banks says he numbered, bound, and indexed the newer laws -- intellectual work that he claims as his original property. Without his efforts, he claims, Liberia's laws would exist only in loose-leaf pamphlets and would likely be lost.

And there I was, thinking that our legal system had problems.

P.S.

I wrote a couple of posts on Liberia a few years ago which can be read here.

8 comments:

Sachin_Should_Eat_Shit_And_Die said...

As usual an AKS post that no one cares about....:(

Brett said...

Talk about ridiculous.

But that's the problem - people have come to see intellectual property protection as some inherent right that should not be abjured under any circumstances. It's nonsense, of course; intellectual property rights, with limitations due to time and the like were created specifically because it was thought that they would encourage innovation and benefit society as a whole.

If they are no longer doing that, then they should be modified as such.

In this case, for example, Banks should have been bought out, or paid a rate to do the bindings as opposed to being allowed to claim them as his IP.

takhalus said...

nasty stuff ..

roti fan said...

What really interesting is that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf actually appointed someone like this to take care of Liberia's law reform comission.

This whole fiasco puts her credibility at risk.

SACHIN_YEAHHH said...

Liberia? Who cares? Can we talks about important mulk khabrain?

Sachin_Should_Eat_Shit_And_Die said...

@SACHIN_YEAHHH

How would these liberal, Proposition 8 opposing, hippies know what's really going on in the motherland.

All they can do is bash our religion.

Haters

roti fan said...

@ Sachin_Yeahh and Sachin_Should_Eat_Shit_And_Die

It is the right of the authors of this blog to publish their views on whatever they wish to. In many cases that involves political, social and cultural events in Pakistan. In this case it was the copyright and ransom of Liberia's legal code. If you do not find a certain post to be of interest to you, you don't have to read it.

I don't appreciate the ad hominem that you have directed at the authors of this blog and I certainly don't appreciate your navel-gazzing attitude when it comes to discussing Liberia.

SACHIN_YEAH said...

@Sachin_Should_Eat_Shit_And_Die

WHY YOU HATE SACHIN! HE BEST PLAYER IN WORLD YOU KNOW.

I AGREE THIS ARE MUMMY DADDY BURGER BOYS. WHAT THEY KNOW OF GREAT RELIGION OF PEACE. ALL THEY DO IS HATE ON OUR FAITH