International copyright laws don’t favour developing countries’ - Nigerian Movies & Nollywood on Naijarules.com

bolanle · #1 (**permalink**) 06-17-2006, 07:42 AM

WHAT is the state of development of copyright in the United States. I know of KOPINOR, the Norwegian Copyright Society which I learnt now collects levies even from chuchces. What is the situation in the United States?One way to answer your question is with respect to developing the law itself. A great deal of the law of countries from Nigeria to the US, to Norway, to many other countries is being driven by international treaties. Treaties such as the Berne Convention on copyright which is being integrated into the World Trade Organization agreement.

And that’s creating something you might call the harmonization of the laws, similarity of the laws as you move from one country to another. But the problem with that of course is that the laws are shaped to meet certain objectives and not every country has the same objective. Developing countries, I think, have very different concerns about copyright so there is some accommodation in those treaties for developing countries.

But realistically, that accommodation is to allow a little more time for those countries to change their laws to conform to the international standards. But I don’t think that the trends in international law are especially helpful to the developing countries. They are creating very strong protection, very long term protection which may be good for some people but you have to remember that in a complex society like Nigeria, like the United States, like Norway, we have a wide variety of interests.

We have major producers of software in television programmes and in music who want their rights protected. But then we also have people who need to make practical use of that material and the law needs to accommodate that kind of use of work. That’s where the tension arises; trying to define what this rights of use might be.

Did the collecting society in the US face the same problem REPRONIG, Nigeria’s collecting society is facing convincing institutions and individuals on the need to pay rights, and how was it resolved?
In the United states, we do a lot of payment of royalties to what we call the Copyright Clearance Centre, it’s the equivalent of your Reprographic Society of Nigeria. And most universities pay a good amount of money to the Copyright Clearance Centre for royalties to reproduce materials. But that’s changing because the materials that we want are increasingly available in the electronic form through data bases that we are paying for. So the money goes to the publishers. But increasingly, it’s going to them through these providers of on-line data bases. And there is less dependence on photocopying of material and making reproductions of it.

There is another situation that’s occurring in the states that’s very different from what you find in developing countries, the easy access to the internet, very easy access by professors, staff members and students at nearly every college or university. What that also means is that people are able to make their own copies and distribute their own copies without going through any kind of central clearance process.

Now, I’m not saying that what they are doing is perfectly legal. I’m saying that it happens and it is happening very, very easily and it’s happening very, very often. How the Copyright Clearance Centre or any other kind of authority plans to control that, I don’t know because it’s in the hands of individuals and that’s very difficult to control.

What we are probably going to have to move towards is broad based licensing instead of a transaction. Allowing access to the data bases of materials and with the purchase price comes a right to make certain copies under certain circumstances.

Are rights paid for sheet music in the US too?
The sheet music industry almost died in the United States because it was so easy to make photocopies and it was very difficult to sell. Sellers of sheet music in the stores were finding that their businesses were disappearing quickly. What they’ve moved toward is the associations representing the composers have now set up data bases where you can purchase copies of sheet music on-line. It’s a small industry really; the sheet music industry is very, very small in the United States.

Do you think it’s possible to get to the stage where owners of copyright will receive adequate compensation for their efforts?
I do believe that we’ll see, probably in our life time, a collapse of the current economic model that copyright is built around. I don’t believe it can last. But probably in our life time, we will see it collapse. And in part it will be because of compensation to the owners.

You asked the question about adequate compensation. What is adequate? Everybody has an opinion on what adequate really means. What I think it means is that there is some relationship between the uses that people are making of that copyrighted work, whether they are enjoying the music or creating some other new literary forms, the uses that people are making of that work and some flow of compensation to the copyright owners, I think that is very important.
http://www.tribune.com.ng/13062006/arts.html