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Book-piracy killing local printing industry
2007-08-29 09:14:42
By Joseph Shayo, PST
Book-piracy is threatening growth of the printing industry as many publishers have resorted to taking their professional work out of the country, PST has learnt.
The Sales and Marketing Manager of a Dar es Salaam based Ben and Company, Daudi Kilasi, observed that the government was loosing millions in revenue and other duties through tax evasion by way of piracy.
He said his company had opted for printing all its books outside the country due to high cost of printing materials, on one hand and avoid book piracy on the other.
He named the imposed Value Added Tax (VAT) as among the factors that made book printing in the country very expensive.
Kilasi said despite existence of the Copy Right law that prohibits printing, distribution and selling of pirate books, little had been done as the regulation remained unknown to many including the law enforcers.
He expressed disappointment that the perpetrators (books pirates) made much profit as they reaped out of other people`s sweat and worse still produced inferior quality titles with very short life span.
He recalled the sporadic nation-wide inspection conducted by the Publishers Association of Tanzania (TAPA) that captured some pirated books in various regions, but wass yet to bring a significant change in the trend.
Notorious regions where pirated books were found displayed in bookshops and by the road book sellers included Arusha, Tanga, Dodoma, Mwanza, Kigoma and Dar es Salaam.
To his surprise and other stakeholders, Kilasa said although the cases were reported to police, not a single one was filed in court for prosecution.
He expressed disappointment on the reality that despite the fact there was a national copyright society (COSATA) to deal with book piracy and ensure enforcement of copy right laws, nothing much had been achieved so far.
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