Prince Osuagwu
7 January 2009
interview
Lagos — Director-general of the Nigerian Copyright Commission NCC, Mr Adebambo Adewopo stormed Lagos recently to brief the press on how far his commission has so far battled the growing menace of piracy.After the meeting, Hi-Tech cornered the soft spoken DG and he gave more inciting details of his crusade and the hope of copyright owners in the country.
Excerpts
Sometime this year your commission supported Alaba international market in launching an Anti-Piracy task-force office, yet the market is said to still be the headquarters of pirates in the entire country. What's your next move?
May be we should revisit the genesis of that task force. Sometime, in the year, some industry practitioners such as NARI, ODRAN and others approached the Commission to support their collective resolve to peacefully engage Alaba with the hope that piracy may be eradicated through consensus action involving some of the executives of the Fancy and Furniture.
Section which harbours the CD sellers. Though we initially disagreed with the idea, the Commission also thought that we should always support stakeholders, particularly when we are working towards a common goal. In fact, I personally went to Alaba against entreaties not to, because you don't go to a jungle that Alaba is and tell them to their face.
But why not? Some people criticized this that the owner does not negotiate its property with a thief particularly a hardened thief for that matter. Yes the Commission is not the right owner but we did that for the sake of the right owners, which was what they wanted us to do anyway. Rightly or wrongly, it shows the sensitivity of government to the demands of its people.
If the government had not cooperated it would have been a different case but now what did they do? They turned against it and made rubbish of the effort by setting up some of their members who embraced that initiative as a peaceful window to sanitise their business and market. It took the law court to discharge the people but not before languishing in jail for several months for nothing.
That singular action has proven to us that Alaba is not ready to lay down their arms in defence of unlawful trade and for us this is unacceptable and remains unacceptable at all times. Meanwhile. This is just about the greed and avarice of just a few who have resolved to continue to reap where they did not sow.
Now is it a case of to their own tents Oh Israel or do you have other strategies to counter them?
We have repeatedly said that Alaba Market is now a special project considering several factors. I don't want to say more than that for now. However, let me say this just in case.
Alaba is a flash point in our anti-piracy enforcement target. Failure in Alaba will embolden pirates and expand their reach. Success in Alaba will deal a heavy and decisive blow to the industry of pirates. It is public knowledge that the Commission has carried out enforcement actions in Alaba in the past, indeed twice in a row within a year. On both occasions, it was met with stiff resistance where copyright inspectors carrying out lawful duties were brutally wounded including journalists and armed mobile police officers. Our vehicles including police vehicles were damaged and bunt down.
I recall that an NTA correspondent on duty was beaten and wounded almost to a state of coma and equipment, including cameras were destroyed. It was a reckless display of brigandage and disdain for constituted authority. It was a demonstration of the fact that Alaba would stop at nothing to defend its illegal and unlawful business.
It was an open declaration of war against government whose interest is to maintain law and order, good business practices and protection of copyright in the market place. The section of Alaba Market, particularly those dealing with CD, VCDs and DVDs, and in some cases books have preyed on those works to the ruination of the entire entertainment industry to the extent that the entire industry now groans at the onslaught of that market.
They now openly offload and distribute huge consignment of pirated materials and render creative enterprise an unprofitable venture. We cannot therefore accept this as the norm and we owe it a duty to protect the industry and the community of genuine right owners from this unscrupulous enemy of state and its creative people.
No word is too strong to describe this breed of robbers whose only means of livelihood is to violently deprive the country's mass of creators of their creativity. Some sections of the industry now honestly believe that Alaba cannot qualify for our public enlightenment programme any more than a forceful enforcement action because with the series of open attacks, recent blackmail and other activities of the key players at Alaba shops, government must now take drastic action.
We have therefore, in response to the legitimate agitation of the creative community and stakeholders, declared Alaba Market a threat to national security and economy. That is why we have said consistently in the last one year that Alaba is a special project. Our stakeholders cannot therefore afford to lose hope. A special project deserves special and extra_ordinary engagement.
The astronomical growth of piracy is worrisome even as it is a menace. What could have triggered off this level of ugly development
Piracy did not start yesterday. It has always been there, indeed, it is a feature in any market place especially such as ours where illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, ignorance and weak enforcement of law are prevalent. But it has grown over the years into a systematically organized industry with its own underground economy.
That underground, informal and hidden economy marks the contradictions of intellectual property protection, particularly within the context of a developing economy such as Nigerian environment. Whilst intellectual property rights must be strictly protected and enforced, it has been argued that those products are not readily available and affordable.
In one instance, during the Commission's advocacy, a notable public figure who should lend a loud voice to our anti_piracy campaign publicly said that he feels sad each time he reads about the Commission raiding markets and ridding his people of their jobs and livelihood.
That may well be a politically correct statement, but how does that legitimize theft of creativity? Pirates have said they also create jobs and Alaba said they even pay taxes. You can imagine such distortions and travesty. The Commission's recent piracy study with Ford Foundation provides our campaign with empirical baseline information on what we have been contending with for decades.
We now know the dynamics, the causes of piracy to enable us formulate and implement an action plan, particularly as we have seen now that we are not just dealing with an illegal activity simplicita but a huge industry with its own system and network.
How do we face that without a well articulated plan of action? We struck a trajectory in STRAP and took on three key strategies, namely enforcement, public enlightenment and administration of rights, all of which was built around the legal and regulatory framework under the enabling Copyright Act and which we have pursued vigorously in the last two years or so.
In implementing these STRAP strategies, the Commission now found itself in a situation of gross incapacity to carry out the realities of STRAP, meaning we must build capacity, particularly enforcement capacity. An agency saddled with enforcement mandate at least in the last ten years is starved of funds and infrastructure to perform enforcement duties which is of highly specialized nature. You can now see what we are experiencing. Whilst carrying out enforcement, we are also at the same time building capacity which we had to do from the scratch.
Trainings, technical knowledge, intelligence, facilities, investigative skills and much more. We had to stretch the small numbers of staff to the limits; we had to restructure, for instance the Commission created Prosecution Department to face prosecution and also a Regulatory Department all in a bid to be able to address the emerging challenges of the environment.
It is an overall rebuilding of the very foundation of an important agency that can help realize the gains of IP protection and surmount one of the most important challenges of development in the 21st century for a developing country such as wealth creation and human capital development. With a multi_faceted, multi-sectoral mandate, all of these activities must go on without waiting for another.
Examine the law itself which is in need of reform particularly in the face of the new globalised environment.How can we expand or deploy so much resources
in enforcement only for a pirate to earn just a six months jail term with an option of fine, although, he can also earn up to five years? But the consensus is that stiffer penalties are needed in the present era of prevalence of piracy.
The digital environment also calls for increased attention; however today Nigeria still remains a viable market to distribute physical materials at least for the next 5_10 years. That is why the campaign is so important and right owners themselves must invest heavily in anti_piracy measures to save their creativity.
The entire fragmented IP administration framework requires revision in the light our national development quotient. In the structure of piracy, two key points must be addressed and these have engaged our attention - Production and Distribution, and this also covers another important point - Import. In the production arena, the Commission has issued the Optical Discs Plants Regulation to regulate the many CD plants. We have focused on these plants in the last one year and we are deepening our engagement to the point that they know the Commission means business.
These plants have become a major source of pirated materials we see all over the place, and most of them are of Asian origin, particularly Chinese.Are you not collaborating with other agencies?
In reality, distribution as a key point of piracy requires over 75% of industry input with enforcement support of the Commission and other relevant agencies like the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) and possibly Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON). With a lawful distribution channel for the various products, the job of enforcement becomes more meaningful.
This is because those channels or outlets define the point of enforcement coupled with the Regulation that oversees production. We believe piracy would now be controlled. But as it is now, distribution is a major leakage and it weakens our collective effort in dealing with piracy. The pirates have taken over all the outlets of distribution and the legitimate industry appears to have capitulated. This must be reversed.
This is why the recent effort of NFVCB in redefining distribution of films must be supported to succeed. Coming to import, recent development shows that we cannot close our eyes on importation, in spite of the significantly high local production capacity occasioned by the influx of CD plants. This year alone, the Commission with the support of the Customs have intercepted illegal importation of pirate CDs has recorded millions, starting from the huge importation of pirated products via South Africa early in the year.
Indeed, that incident opened the Commission's eye to the menace of illegal importation as another point our radar cannot afford to overlook. Subsequent to the seizure, and the Commission's engagement with Customs particularly in Lagos, many pirated materials being imported have been impounded and investigation of those illegal imports is being conducted. The Commission has already commenced prosecution of the South African import.
But do you have plans to engage the public into fighting this war with you?
Yes, the Commission believes we are not alone in this campaign. It is just that the collective effort must be up_scaled for a deeper, better impact now than before.
Ittakes a concerted effort because the market is a constant and an accomplice. While we expect Nigerians to buy_in, but old habit, particularly when it is convenient, dies hard. Let us take for instance, that we remove all pirated CDs from the market, where are the originals, especially the foreign music or film; they are not being distributed and there is a huge demand and non_existent supply.
That is why we said a well coordinated effort is required, on the supply or business side, on the regulatory side, on the enforcement side, all supportive, not antagonistic or negative, to each other. But this enforcement effort must be consistent and carried to the highest red_hot level, just that it is costly, technical and demanding.
We can do it and these bad people must be forced to close shop or change their ways while we preach awareness to the listening populace who will be ready to respect creativity. What is the state of collective administration of rights in the country's music industry? As you are well aware, we have come to the point where there are no approved Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) in the Music Industry.
A new Regulation will bring about a new lease of life in Nigeria's collective administration of rights in music. The implementation of the Action Plan in respect of the Regulation will roll out with high expectation that some orderliness, decorum and high sense of responsibility would be observed by key players. Consequently, the regulation has now set a new platform for interested organisations to apply to the Commission for approval to operate as a CMO.
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