When you buy a CD you own the physical medium, and you can play it as much as you want. What you don't own is the music. The artists, the publisher, the authors and many other people own it. But not you alone. So you don't have the right to copy it, nor do you have the right to make other copies from it and give them away to all and sundry. That is the law.

The Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act was assented by the 7th parliament commenced on 4th August 2006. To put it into action, the Uganda performing Rights Society (UPRS) has introduced stickers identified as band rolls with special security features that will curtail piracy.

The band rolls have a silver line such as that seen on bank notes and have other secret security features that will make it impossible for anyone to sell copies that are not original. Courtesy of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a UN body in charge of protecting copyright laws in the world, UPRS has now set the ball rolling.

Despite the regulation, piracy has continued to raise its ugly head leaving local talent suffering the unrelenting effects. That artistes in Europe and USA sell millions of copies of their albums sounds unbelievable to a Ugandan artiste. To hear of record labels certainly sounds like Greek.

The general picture is that it would be a dream come true for our local artistes to be certain that selling their music can give them a sure means of survival.

But such is the local industry where artistes largely depend on staging concerts to earn from their talent because the habit of buying records from music stores is almost inexistent among Ugandans.

As artistes are often seen performing from one concert to another throughout the year, not even the best rated artistes in the country sell satisfactory numbers of copies of their albums. The market has become a breeding ground for the dirty business of piracy.

A tour at one of Kampala's music stores, Musicland showed that only music done by the 'big' wigs of the music industry does profitable business. A salesman at Musicland who preferred anonymity revealed that the store makes more money out of albums from foreign artistes than from local Ugandan music. Asked why only a few albums by local artistes appeared on the shelves he bewailed piracy. "Of course the biggest problem we face is that of piracy. An original copy of an album goes for shs.10, 000 but you find it being sold elsewhere at half the price."

The disgruntled salesman adds that because they buy rights from artistes before they can sell their music, sometimes they disagree on prices. Artistes spend a lot of time working in the studios to produce albums that are not only meant to earn them a living but also sell their name. When piracy creeps in, it is a blow hard enough to affect their inspiration.

At Kasiwukira, one of Uganda's oldest music stores, having been distributing music for the past 20 years, the problems they face are not any different. Here, you find a wide variety of local music as well as that done by African artistes. Mr Steven Serumunye the Manager at Kasiwukira confirms that local artistes make more money from concerts than from selling their albums. He laments the effects of the illegal exercise where people buy a few original copies and reproduce over 1,000 copies out of them. "This means that they make more money than us who sell original copies."

With these evils deeply rooted, something has to change and one of the avenues will be to kick out piracy.

The genie is out of the bottle and no amount of wishing on the part of people involved in piracy can put it back in again. It annoys the artistes like crazy but perhaps they have a point. When you think about it, they put a lot into their music. Listen to interviews with artists and again and again you hear how songs were based on personal experiences, or are there to exorcise their own personal demons. And that means a lot to any artiste.

How it works

According to UPRS General Secretary James Wasula the band rolls will be glued at the opening of the CD case.

"All music CD's being sold without the sticker will be fake and whoever is found selling them will be dealt with according to the law," Wasula assures.

The music distributors are responsible for the insertion of the band rolls onto CD jackets and UPRS has recruited people all over the country to inspect defiance.

After a nation-wide survey done by UPRS, which revealed that over 8000 people were making money out of selecting songs from different artistes and compiling them on one CD, the Audio-Visual Distributors Association was founded to register all people involved in piracy. As a way of enabling them to continue earn a living members of the association will be made sub-agents to music distributors who are to leave a profit margin for them.

The copyright law stipulates that if you are using music for public consumption you have to pay its rightful copyright owner. It's this law that requires that all radio stations in the country must pay artistes every time their music is played on air. UPRS has in the past held talks with different radio stations in the country and although some of them didn't agree to cooperate, the body hopes that with time all local radio stations they will all conform.

What is interesting is that for all the descriptions of copyright "theft" and "stealing" music, it's not a criminal offence. Not unless you're making money from the piracy. It's a civil offence to copy things for free, which means all you are liable for is a fine. If on the other hand you're mad enough to try to make money selling copied CD's then you can go behind bars if found guilty.

Another way to curb piracy is through selling music online. True African is one of the companies in Uganda helping artistes make money in that way. Dancehall maestro, Peter Miles, is one of the very few Ugandan artistes who sell their music online. "I signed a contract with one of websites and it has brought me some good money," he says.

Asked if music can be pirated online Miles says that in most cases online music websites allow listening to but not downloading music.. You can only purchase it by credit card.

Like Wasula says, artistes in the west don't work themselves out performing for the public every other day. With the band rolls in place maybe our local artistes can now sell a copy.