Brenda Yufeh
14 March 2008
Cameroon's law defines author's right as that set of exclusive rights in original literacy or artistic creations. The rights so granted may be exercised by the respective holders as well as societies known in the doctrine and by the lawmaker as "management societies", "collective management societies", "authors' rights' societies" or better still "copyright corporations". Given that a creative mind has the right to receive remunerations once his work of art is being used publicly, there are four copyright corporations in Cameroon to make sure that authors reap what they sow. But the question is how do authors get their money?
Few authors can personally manage their rights, for example, directly negotiating the performance of a play, the publication of a novel or the recording of a musical composition. The majority of author's rights holders, incapable of exerting control over all the uses made of protected works, need the services of one or more structures that can contact users, negotiate exploitation contracts, collect and distribute royalties and, if need be, go to court. According to the law, once accredited, collective management societies may exercise collective management by acting as intermediaries between rights holders and the public. In their "intermediary role" Elise Mballa, Board Chairman at the Copyright Corporation for Literature and Dramatic Arts (SOCILADRA), says they operate under the ordinary rules of law but are above all subject to special provisions which determine and institute control over their operating mechanism. Authorities at the Ministry of Culture say an author is entitled to 70 percent of the proceeds gotten from the use of his works of arts while 30 per cent of the money goes to the running of the affairs of the copyright corporation. Elise Mballa explained that the four copyright corporations: SOCILADRA, the Copyright Corporation for Audio-Visual and Photography (SCAAP), the Cameroon Music Corporation (CMC) and the Copyright Corporation for Plastic Fine Arts and Graphics (SOCADAP) work hand in gloves in making sure that artists are paid.
The price paid by users of artistic works is determined by the Minister of Culture. Once agents from the various corporations go to the field to collect money from their users, experts say royalties collected by the societies must be paid into a special common deposit account opened in an approved bank. Officials from the various copyright corporations later on sit to debate on what each of the cooperation gets into its coffers. The debate usually takes place under the permanent Commission for Mandating and Controlling of Collective Corporation for copyright management. Thereafter each copyright corporation is given its own share of money to pay its authors. At this point, experts say the technical department of each corporation gets to work to determine the coefficient of those whose works of arts have been exploited, when it was used and the time frame. This determines how much an artist gets. As such Elise Mballa notes that a lazy artist will hardly gain money as he will definitely not have works of arts that are being exploited.
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