Students Urged to Protect the Rights of Authors

Dr. Cherrell Shelley Robinson, author and lecturer at the University of the West Indies, has urged students to protect the rights of authors by not plagiarising their material.
Dr. Robinson, who was speaking at the launch of World Book and Copyright Day 2006 on Tuesday (April 11) at the St. Thomas Technical High School, said that while it was important for students to read widely and research, they must protect the reading material and preserve the rights of the authors.
“In today’s information age, nobody can teach you everything you need to know, so reading material is very important and .the rights of the author should be protected,” she said. “One way of respecting the rights of authors is not copying their work illegally, because that robs them of their financial rewards for the hard work they put into producing the book,” she stated.
World Book and Copyright Day is an annual observance of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and according to Secretary General for the Caribbean Region, Everton Hannam, what UNESCO has tried to do over the past 11 years, “is to sensitise persons about copyright and issues associated with copyright, piracy and the laws governing it to raise the level of awareness about these issues to students, teachers and the general public in Jamaica.”
“World Book and Copyright Day is an activity specially geared towards informing and educating students, teachers and librarians on all the issues relating to copyright,” he stressed, expressing the hope that, “by the time its effectiveness can be accurately measured, say in another 20 years, it would be firmly in the minds of a vast majority of the populace that copyright is a very important matter and that there is need for it to be taken very seriously”.
Tenth grade student, Kemisha Lawrence, told JIS News that although she did not understand everything about copyright and the rules governing the issue, she was happy that the launch took place at her school. “At least I got a chance to hear about it and so now I know a little and with the material they have left behind, I can go up to the library and read some more at my own pace,” she said.