This the concluding part of the items copyright protects, which started running last week; today, Mr. Mayo Ayilaran, who is the Director General of Nigeria’s oldest copyright management organisation (MCSN), speaks on what copyright protects in an interview with Charles Okogene.
What then is a copyright issue?
I have told you; copyright issue is about six subjects. One, literally works; that is if you write a book, novel and even the process of doing something; in this days of entrepreneurship, if you have a flair for writing and you write on how to become a successful farmer and you document it in a book and release it to the public and people are coming to buy. A farmer can say ‘come o, have you seen a book written by XYZ on how to fish? Go and get it, it is a good book. All that falls under the scoop of literally work that are protected by copyright.
Two, musical works. You know what it is musical works, we don’t need to dwell much on that. Artistic work like painting, drawings, sculpturing and so….
Sound recording, it can be music, voice, natural noise like thunder. If you can record them when they are moving in their fury and etc all fall under copyright. Audio visual works also fall under copyright, so ideas do not fall under copyright .
Do you think people out there are aware of what you are telling me ?
Well, since I am not in information gauging business, I will not be able to answer that question. But what I will say is that if you are going into any business try as much as possible to find out the details of the knowledge that you need about that business. If you have at the back of your mind of getting some material benefit out of what you want to do, find out all the business and legal aspects of it. That is all I can say because from my own personal experience, I have done that so much but for people in the business of copyright but the moment you start to educate them about it, they will come across to you as if they know it all. The will be the ones to ask questions and be answering them. Even those that in business of using copyright, if you go to educate them that if they do not take copyright license, for what they are doing here, it will affect their business negatively, they will not listen to you; instead, they will be asking and answering the questions and the next thing is that you assumed they so much about it so if you are taking the legal step to protect your own side of the business, they can no longer go to court to say ‘ my lord, I do not know’ because the evidence would been that they know what they do not know and when we tried to explain to them, they were the ones that were asking the questions and giving the answers. So it is difficult for me to know how deep the knowledge of copyright is outside there. People must be able to know the law that governs the business they are in, what are the benefits and what are the negatives .
MCSN is about the oldest copyright management organisation (CMO) in Nigeria, if I am not wrong, but suddenly it was placed in the cooler by the NCC for so many years before the table positively turned for the Society about two years ago; MCSN was registered . Now, my question is, what has been the reactions of musicians toward the recognition?
I can say that the reactions of the musicians have been very, very positive because we have a huge number of them coming to register daily. Both the young, the old and up and coming, to join MCSN and so it has been a forward movement journey for us. And for right users, their reactions have become more positive because before it had been ‘hey, I cannot pay, you are not the owner of the work or show us the authority to collect and so on and so forth since we do not go to them with police or taskforce from the government. But now People are more copyright friendly. Generally the coast is expanding.
At what point does copyright and piracy meet and does piracy affect copyright negatively?
Copyrights start to act when piracy begins to occur. Piracy is doing things that is not authorized by copyright law. For instance, if I begin to reproduce somebody’s book without the permission of the ower of the book or the publisher because the book is selling like some people are doing to primary school texts. The moment you begin to do that without the permission of the owner of the text or the moment you begin to reproduce the musical works of 2baba or Orits Williki, without their consent or you begin to play their music in your bar without license from MCSN, copyright is activated. Copyright act is a set of laws that grants the owner of intellectual work the right to permit others to exploit the work in any form under the law but the moment you do that without permission, copyright law will be activated against you and that means you are committing an act that is known as piracy and punishable under the copyright. So, that is where the two meets and piracy impacts negatively on copyright because the proceeds from a pirated work will no go to the rights owner instead it goes to the pirate, so they are reaping where they did not sow. Other form of piracy that has gone to other fields and it is known as counterfeiting, which affects drugs. You go to medicine store to buy paracetamol and they sell you mere chalk to you. These are effects of piracy on the national physic and that is what we are fight against.
Leave a Reply