Big brother is watching you Vendors sell pirated books on a pavement in central Bulawayo in this file picture

Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
There is not any no-nonsense big brother watching anyone in Zimbabwe – or elsewhere for that matter — but the law/laws of the country.

As such, brazen copycats who have with impunity been reaping where they did not sow must know that they are in the eye of the storm poised to engulf them without any prior notice.

That is the clear warning from Mr Masimba Guzha, a director in the private company, Piracy Prevention in Zimbabwe, following reports about books, particularly school textbooks being photocopied and vended out in broad daylight in the city of Bulawayo.

As a matter of fact, there have been persistent reports of the pirating of school textbooks in other parts of the country for a very long time but with no reports of any remedial action being taken against offenders.

A picture emerging from such a scenario is that of individuals or syndicates who boast of post-modern technological devices making a killing, as it were, from piracy while authors and publishers of the original books are deprived of the due benefits from their sweat with more material sold at lower prices but with no royalties going to authors, for instance.

Mr Guzha said the anti-piracy organisation which mounts campaigns on offenders with judicial authorisation was targeting school heads with those of private educational institutions in the eye of the storm of the blitzkrieging organisation.

Last week Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said the book publishing fraternity should approach the police commissioner general in order for the force to help rid the country of the pirates.

Mr Guzha did mention, however, that their organisation was operating with the help of the police.

A picture that emerges from this whole scenario of book piracy is that not widespread and consistent publicity has been given to raise the attention of the public at large about the illegality of photocopying for self-enrichment that which other people sweated to produce.

Expecting school heads to prevent their charges from using pirated texts is expecting rather too much.

Strict policing of public marketplaces for books with never-to-forget penalties for pirates appears to this pen to hold a better chance of curbing the illegal practice.

Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi

Surely, no patriot should be proud to have their mother country, freed from colonial racism and oppression by a revolutionary spirit, now becoming infamous as the land of rampant book piracy.

The powers that be might wish to consider, before the good name of the country is dragged through deeper mud, how the pirates should be called to book once and forever.

Otherwise, poor young souls might be lured into body-pirating, under the innocent belief that the craft is holy.

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