Musical Copyright Society Nigeria, MCSN, says it will not relent in getting the right value for music and making users of creative works give the owners their rightful dues.
President of the Society, Dr. Sunday Adegeye, popularly known as King Sunny Ade stated this at a news Conference in Lagos.
King Sunny Ade who expressed appreciation to the National Assembly for enacting the new Copyright laws which he said had paved way for a strengthened music industry, pointed out that owners of creative works in neighbouring African countries were making huge funds from copyright earnings.
The music icon whose message was delivered by ace musician, Mr. Its Wiliki said noncompliance with court judgements by some unauthorised users of creative works is harming musicians and also holding back the government’s legitimate dues.
Despite the groundbreaking decisions of the appellate courts, certain powerful users of creative works, particularly musical and sound recordings have continued in their ‘divide and rule’ strategy of causing disagreement in our industry, by refusing to pay due royalties and thereby denying our musicians and government their legitimate income. With great reluctance, MCSN has commenced infringement actions at the Federal High Court against certain users of musical works and sound recordings in the Broadcasting and hospitality industries.
”One of such outfits has been filed a claim of over twenty-nine billion naira. It is noteworthy that it is the same company that the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal gave judgements against and awarded damages in the sum of 5.9 billion in 2018 and 2020. Since the amicable resolution of the judgement, the organisation has refused to honour it’s copyright obligations to MCSN since 2021″, he stated.
The Music Copyright Society commended Nigeria Copyright Commission for sustaining the growth of copyright culture in Nigeria as well as deploring machinery in actualising Copyright Act 2022.
Director General of the Society, Mr. Mayowa Ayilaran in a remark called on the younger generation to get involved in the accountability drive, saying more technologies are now employed to monitor and log usage of creative works.
” The younger generation are expected to be part of us and not being passive about copyright royalties”, he said.
Classical music legend, Omatshola Iselli, popularly called Tee Mac and Entertainment Executive, Dr. Kenny Ogungbe said copyright infringements deprives the creatives of their dues, noting that some of them live on the royalties from the works.
The Director-General, Nigerian Copyright Commission. Mr. John Asein in a message commended the doggedness of MSCN.
He added that Information Technology had made creative works susceptible to abuse, hence the cooperation of the NCC with the Copyright Society to ensure that Musicians live prosperous lives even during retirement.
Writing by Olusegun Haaatrup; Editing by Jennifer Ogor and Tijjani Ibrahim
Source: https://radionigeria.gov.ng/