copyright in Burma

Dear Eisel

You wrote:

Bhante Nyanatusita is correct that Burma has no international
> copyright law: their status as a "pariah state" has excluded them from
> international conventions on copyright (inter alia).


You are right in that Burma  is a "pariah state" at present but it has
nothing to do with copyrights. Burma does have copyright laws for local
publishers but all successive governments since achieving independence in
1948 have refused to sign international copyright conventions.

Their reasoning is simple. Burma is a poor country. If international
copyright laws are to be followed, Burmese publishers must give royalities
or license fees to their international counterparts for reprints or
translations, which would have become too expensive for the most of Burmese
readers.  So their attitude is "to live and let live" --- Burma won't claim
protection for her intellectual property abroad, and no foreigner can claim
theirs in Burma.

with metta

Ven. Pandita


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