The First Arab Publishers' Conference concluded Riyadh Wednesday with calls for the lifting of censorship and proposals for an Arab distribution company to encourage the dissemination of books. The “Future of the Publishing Industry in the Arab World” gathering, held by the Ministry of Culture and Information and the Saudi Publishers' Society at King Fahd Cultural Center in Riyadh, heard further proposals for the protection of intellectual property rights that included establishing a fund to defend publisher rights against book piracy introducing the concept of intellectual property into education curricula. The two-day meetings addressed numerous issues related to the publishing industry ranging from investor-publisher relations in electronic publishing projects, Internet publishing, digitizing books, publisher-author contractual relations, to encouraging support for translation and translators from Arab governments. The conference also called for greater support for children's literature.
