Happy Birthday Karys! Finally a teenager. Hope you had a great day and I'll see you soon. In my last post, I mentioned that Miss Malaika is in town. Did you check out her website? OK! So you know that Miss Malaika is Africa's premier beauty pageant. Well, the Sierra Leonean licence holder chose to work with Supreme Inc on the event. It looks like we've bagged another big one!
Nicky's is Lead Consultant on this one, and she's working closely with Scopemedia. Lawrence is helping them put together the pre-pageant concert. He should be working with some of Sierra Leone's leading musicians. A major issue for the Miss Malaika pageant though is the World Cup. A lot of Sierra Leoneans will be watching the games unfold so choosing a date for an event during is quite tricky. Who knows, we may just move the event to a date after July 9th when it'll all be over. Gotta be done before August though, as the winner of Miss Malaika has to go represent Sierra Leone in the pan-African event.
On another front, The Ministry of Trade and Industry with support from DFID hosted the first National Stakeholder Workshop on Intellectual Property Rights. Supreme Inc were invited to participate. Nicky was one of the discussants on the topic of Copyright and Related Rights.
The panel also included a couple of the consultants from SAANA Consulting -
www.saanaconsulting.fi - the appointed Chairperson and a representative of the Ministry of Tourism.
The introductory discussions made it clear that the Sierra Leone copyright laws are adequate given today's environment. Enforcement is the issue. As things stand, the onus is on the copyright holder to enforce their rights. Bottomline? The artist, musician, record label, or whoever owns the copyright must protect it. Kinda like you would protect a house or car.
In as much as I do not disagree with the onus being placed on the copyright holder, I would argue that access to legal recourse, or the lack of it, is a key factor in allowing copyright infringement to go unpunished. I mean, where is the struggling musician going to get the funds to take a violator to court? Gathering the evidence to make the charge in the first place is an issue and major constraint. The guy from Tourism - Mr Martin - argued that the police are equipped to deal with violators because the laws are already in the books. They just need to be enforced.
I say, "not so". Doing a good job protecting copyrights needs special knowledge and we cannot expect that resources will be available to train every police officer to the required level. So, I would argue that a special 'Anti-piracy Task Force' is a must. Kitty Fadlu-Deen didn't like the term 'Collective Management Societies' because it reminded her of US Tax Collectors. My own take on the term was one of surprise to find out that a service that we offer out of necessity - Royalty Collection -
www.ShowBizSierraLeone.com/supreme/royalties.htm - is a well established industry. Now that we know about these Collective Management Societies, we plan to network with as many of them as possible so that we can collect royalties on behalf of foreign rights holders but also, we can get 'societies' in other parts of the world to collect royalties on our behalf.
All in all, the workshop was great. We made some new friends and hope to keep in touch with Tom and Mart from SAANA Consulting. We also hope to work more closely with the Ministry of Trade and Industry on issues affecting copyright holders around the world.
Right now, we're updating our database of works - books, CDs, DVDs, etc., - that are being legally or illegally being sold in Sierra Leone, which is part of the work of the UAP Coalition -
www.ShowBizSierraLeone.com/supreme/anti-piracy.htm - This database will allow copyright holders to log on and check if their products are being pirated in Sierra Leone. If they find out that they are, they can choose to do nothing about it or they can get in touch with our Royalty Collection Unit. It was interesting to discuss those instances of piracy or counterfeiting, where the government has the burden of protecting rights of others.
Large quantities of counterfeit anti-malaria drugs are being sold around the world and this topic will be the subject of a CNN documentary called 'Dealing in Death'. Should be airing in June 2006 with assistance from the World Health Organisation. Malaria is a key reason for Sierra Leone's high mortality rate so the onus on ensuring that rights are protected should fall squarely on the shoulders of the government. They must ensure that real drugs are easily accessible in the market and that counterfeit drugs are kept out.
I had the chance to discuss some of Supreme's initiatives against piracy, especially music piracy, as it affects our artists. When we came into the music industry by releasing the Borbor Bele album by Emmerson, copyright holders would stamp the inside front sleeve of their CDs and the reverse of audio cassette labels. The problem with that system was that, you couldn't do spot checks on the streets because most of the Cassetter sellers will not allow you to open their packaging. So we pioneered stamping on the outside of the sleeves so you can see your mark easily. With the better quality scanners on the market, the pirates simply copied your sleeves after you've authenticated them. We are going to pilot a system using stick-on labels. In the first instance, we will create our own labels and stick them on to each and every sleeve. These will be harder to copy because the labels will have to be reproduced and we plan to minimise this by adding some security bits to the printing.
This system is one we hope to push out to all copyright holders, with support from the Ministry of Trade and Industry as one of the solutions to the issue of piracy in Sierra Leone. Basically, CDs, cassettes, books and any other physical product can be quickly authenticated by rights holders, special task forces can easily enforce copyright laws and the government earns revenue from the income from the labels being purchased - for a small fee - or from taxes paid by legitimate distributors. Also, if the rights holders earn more royalties, they will be paying more taxes, so the benefits for government are quite huge.
Do you print labels? Do get in touch with us about this or any other issue you wish.
www.ShowBizSierraLeone.com/supreme/feedback.htmRegards
LSC
