Indonesian government buys books copyrights - update

In February, I translated a news report about the Indonesian government planning to buy the Copyright for Indonesian text books, and let libraries distribute them freely. At that time I made a plea for these books to be also released as Creative Commons on the web. Since then three more articles have been published on [i:boekoe] about this scheme, and I will summarize/paraphrase the information below (please consult the original article for exact quotes), interspersed with my own comments.

View from the Book Center at the National Library
To improve access to text books for students in elementary and junior secondary school. “Buying the copyrights for these text books includes the right to publish and copy through media such as photocopies, electronical and optical(?) during 15 years in all of Indonesia. This policy can reduce book prices to a 1/3 of the current wholesale prices,” stated Sugjianto, head of the Center for Books at the National Library on February 15.

In 2007, The Center for Books already bought copyrights for 37 books, including for Indonesian, maths, English and natural sciences, and this year they are going to buy 21 book titles. Before purchasing the titles, their quality will be assessed between May 13-16 and September 23-26, 2008. After being bought, the material will be put onto diskets, CDs and online. They can be accessed, downloaded and printed since the copyright belongs to the government, as long as its not for profit. Through the spreading of the internet, the students will not have to pay for textbooks anymore. The problem is how to spread internet access to every corner of Indonesia.

Hak Cipta Penulis Buku Pelajaran Dibeli Rp 100 Juta-Rp 175 Juta Per Buku, Harian Kompas, February 16, 2008
Authors’ copyrights bought for between 100-175 million rupiah (between 11,000$ and 19,000$) per book

Comment: In other articles they talk about buying several hundred books, here only 27 this year. In the original article I understood it as buying the copyrights so that companies could compete to produce cheap print versions of the books, but here it sounds like the main push is for putting it online, which I am very skeptical to given the access to ICT in Indonesia, and the learning habits of children. The cost of the copyright (between 11,000$ and 19,000$) also seems high - for this amount you could probably hire three teachers for a year to write the books.

I am saddened by the idea that the copyright will only be available for 15 years (why?), and cannot be used by commercial enterprises. It also seems like it will be limited to Indonesia, but this is not clear. This means that commercial bookstores cannot print up cheap versions and sell them to students without internet access, and also that the material will not be usable by the international open educational resources community, which could have both benefited from the material, and contributed to improving it.

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The view from Indonesia Corruption Watch and the Teachers’ Union:

Ade Irawan from Indonesia Corruption Watch states that the idea of buying the copyrights is good, but it will not solve the problem of high book prices. For one subject, the student might have to buy three text books, including a workbook, which is written in and cannot be used again by other students. It’s not certain that teachers will want to use the textbooks whose copyrights have been bought by the government, and forcing them to do so would impinge on their authority and autonomy as teachers.

In addition to this, not all areas have access to the internet, and since the plan is to distribute the books electronically, this will make it difficult for areas that are farther behind. He says that the cost of books makes up a large part of the cost of attending school, and that the government must address this.

Suparman, head of the Federation of Independent Teachers of Indonesia (FGGI) agrees. He says that the program has to be carried out in a consistent and sustainable fashion, otherwise the students might end up using books that are outdated compared to the development of science and technology. He also touches on the technology aspect, stating that when taking into account the cost of training students, parents and teachers, it might not be cheaper than printed books. But with the existence of this program, he hopes that the government will push and support teachers in writing good quality text books.

Pembelian Hak Cipta Buku tak Selesaikan Soal, Harian Kompas, February 19, 2008
The buying of book copyrights is not solving the problem

Comment: I agree with their preoccupation around technology, and I am surprised that this focus has shifted from when I first heard about the project. I also support Suparman’s idea of pushing teachers into creating and sharing high quality content. Indeed what I’d love to see is for this material to become truly free, so that teachers all around Indonesia (and Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei) could contribute to continuously improving this material.

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The view from the publishers’ union:

The head of the Indonesian Publishers Union (Ikapi) Setia Dharma Madjid said on February 22nd that the government policy did not consider the interests of private publishers, and that the idea of the government buying copyrights and providing text books resembles a monopoly situation.He agrees that the purchase of the 250 titles is a good thing, but believes that it’s a wasteful use of government resources. The government states that the books will be published online, but he questions the number of Indonesian families who can access the internet, and how much that will cost - perhaps it will be more costly than buying the printed books.

He also fears that text books published by private publishers will not be accessible to schools, because the government has not bought the copyrights. In conclusion, he believes that this policy has been rushed through and is not practical. He questions why Ikapi, which has already invested in infrastructure for book distribution to the farthest reaches of Indonesia has not been involved in the process.

Pemerintah Monopoli Pengadaan Buku Pelajaran, Harian Kompas, February 23, 2008
The Government Monopoly on Providing Text Books

Comment: Suddenly they are buying 250 books, and not 27 as stated above. I am also a bit curious about why this would be an attack on private enterprise, I thought the government was buying material from them? Or is the government commissioning people to write these books? In that case, why the restrictive copyright?

Stian

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 16:04 and is filed under asia, books, education/academia, libraries, open-education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.