Bold Moves By Local Artistes to Enforce Copyright Law

Yesterday, something important happened. 

One of our Local Artistes Bebe Cool took some direct steps to enforce
copyright law in Uganda. 
In a story relayed by the WBS TV, and retold by a local late night WBS
TV show, the artist 
visited a section of the city where some of his music was being resold
and made some arrests.

His response made a lot of sense. He sounded rather exhasuted by the
circulations in media, 
songs and taunts by some of his detractors about, "the unbuilt house". 

In all the seriousness that this involved there was a touch of humor
when one of the women 
at the scene expressed her joy at seeing the star and stated "Nandi
mulabye di" when would i ever have 
seen this star had it not been for this incident. 

The host of the late night music show (popularly know as Chopper
Chopper) was right when he stated that, "while the act of attempting to 
enforcing the law was bold and in a sense right, the artist is in for a
long and exhasting fight". 
His suggestion was similar to some of what is already taking place
behind the scenes-which involves the creation 
of larger groups for artists, musicians, and other creators as well as
designated producers and re-producers to 
deal with the whole value chain.    

As graduates of a recently concluded CopyrightX course created and
designed mainly around U.S Law 
and designed by the Berkman School (Harvard) and Hosted by Makerere
University. These are some of our thoughts 
regarding the challenges he and other artistes might face in light of
recent developments. 

1. The two edged sword of copyright law.

There are chances that many more artists will take similar moves to
attempt to protect their copywritten material.
What this will raise though is the what we covered in the First week of
the copyright law (Foundations of Copyright law)
where we sought to distinguish between ideas and expressions. In that
week we learned that it was not enough to 
think of something and then claim it as your own but that one had to
seek a method of fixing or at least laying a formal
claim on what one creates. The artist, the writer of fiction, the
photographer, the writer of music, the creator of dance 
sequences all have to find a method of capturing their content and
creating records of the same. 
My guess is among the artists there would be many who would fear this
law because of the possiblity of losing 
cases based on an unhealthy use of other people intellectual property. 

2. A different price for different brides.

One of the major challegnes that the aforementioned artist mentioned in
his plea to the people was about the 
price of the product. People at this level were copying and selling his
material for about 2000/= or 3000/=
when he had created and marketed his product to fetch between 20000/=
and 80000/=.
In the Fourth week we begain to deal with the complexities of price
where Economics was married to 
intelelctual property. In that week the idea was to find the balance
between quantity of product sold and the price.  
Armed with these numbers, the artist can then figure out how to sell to
different markets and achive 
a maximum amount of revenue from these products. Here we found how some
products can be sold at rather costly
prices for University Faculties and at different prices for say Non
Governmental Organization. 
What the artist could find is that if he gives a select group of people
the right to sell certain copies of his 
music at a low cost (much like hard cover and paper back books), he
might end up making more money 
in the long run and alienating fewer of his hard earned followers.

3. Awakening midas

The other side of a similar debate invoves a clash between the
distributors and artists 

If we lived in the days of midas, one would only have to beg to have him
touch the product and in an instant 
it would go platinum or in this case gold.
This explains at least to some extent the relationship between Disk
Jokeys and Artists.
There are a select group of popular hosts on Radio Stations who need
only whisper your name 
and your song will go 'viral'. The same goes for Disk Jockeys and Video
Disk Jockeys. 
This is a carry on to other lectures in which we began to deal with the
Right to Distribute, Perform and Display
(Eighth Week). 
Eight months ago, this battle took a sour turn and the music
distributors began to state that without their skills
the music of the local starts would not be heard. So suggestion began to
be made around forming local 
distribution chains that would give some basic fee to the artists for
every disk sold. But this was just a tip of the 
ice berg, we were yet to deal with performance of these creative works
on radio, in restaurants, online 
as well as copying that was taking place online.   

4. The challenge of enforcement

There is no shortage of cases that cover the subject of copywritten
material. 
In the first week we also sought to identify the nature of international
law and their effect on
those countries which sign up to these laws. We noticed for example how
in certain cases, the Americans 
had refused to sign up to certain agreements and instead created 'better
clauses' to fit thier locals. 
Other nations though were bound to these laws and were often supposed to
help enforce these laws in 
protection global interests. We saw some of the effects of this when a
raid took place in 
our of our print media hubs (clusters) where 'fake' products (printer
cartriges) were impounded.
The response to this from notable figures such as the association of
local traders (KASITA)
was that enforcement was supposed to take place at the port of exit and
placing the burden on
local traders was asking for too much.

5. The way forward 

a) Look at current and local legislation regarding copyright,
trademarks, and intellectual property, 
as well as international law regarding the same. 

b) The Creation value chains that mirror the ones in the U.S with the
ultimate goal of 
finding best practice. 

c)  Clustering of similar groups such as Artists, Producers,
Distributors, Directors. 

d) The Three pronged approach:

  i) Creating linkages with local Universties to create courses that
are desgined for people in 
  media to boost their skills in management and law.
  ii)  Use of goverment to create funding or budget lines to cater for
investment in creative people. 
  iii) Be aggresive with businesses in using your image.

g)  When you hire assistants, make sure he/she has studied management,
some basic law in intellectual
property or onctract law, finance/accounting and marketing.