Copyright Commission Pledges Support for CMOs Survival

THE Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) will do everything possible to assist Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) to survive in order to sustain wealth creation in the creative industry.

NCC Director-General, Dr. John O. Asein, gave this assurance while speaking at the 2021 Annual General Meeting of the Musical Copyright Society Nigeria (MCSN) in Lagos on 15th December 2021.

In his words: “We will do everything to ensure the survival of CMOs. Every CMO must be helped to survive because the anti-piracy battle has to be fought together. So, we will support CMOs just as we believe they will support us.”

He added: “We will go the extra mile to assist CMOs to survive. We must do anything we can to show our belief in the CMO system and our support for the sustainable growth of CMOs.”

The Director-General commended the MCSN for putting the Annual General Meeting together, expressed satisfaction with the impressive participation of right owners at the meeting.

“I am impressed that the AGM is well organised and members are quite active. The management and board of MCSN were willing to respond to issues. The management and board of CMOs must listen to the members because the owners of CMOs are its members. I wouldn’t want a CMO where it is only the chairman and management that are talking. I want a CMO where ideas come from all sides because you get the best from that. And that is what I have seen today,” he stated.

“So CMOs need support. We should be constructive partners in ensuring that the ultimate beneficiaries, that is, the right owners, get what is supposed to go to them. That is the bottom line of CMO administration. And that is what we want to do without necessarily being too hasty about withdrawing approval”, he added.

Dr. Asein, however, warned that the Commission would not fold its hands and watch CMOs perpetrate acts with impunity while committing infractions: “You cannot allow infractions, you cannot allow impunity and you cannot allow criminality under the guise of ‘l have gone to court’. It is not acceptable”.

The Director-General further informed that the Commission’s records showed that there “is one approved CMO in Music, one CMO for Audiovisual and one CMO for Literary Works.  You can’t be on the pitch and say the referee has no control over you. It’s not done anywhere”.  He added: “For NCC, it’s not about being a referee. It’s about going into partnership so that the industry will be the ultimate beneficiary of this whole thing. The Commission is adding value to every CMO.”

Earlier, the Chairman of MCSN, Mr. Orits Williki, had stated that Nigeria was one of the leading societies on the African continent with enduring structures to defend, promote and advance the moral and economic interests of members and their associates. “We are making good progress in the rebuilding of our operations and infrastructure across the nation for effective and efficient operations.”

In his remarks, the Chief Executive Officer of MCSN, Mr. Mayo Ayilaran, appealed to members of the organisation to support it in carrying out its operations diligently.

 

Olumide Oduntan
Assistant Director, Public Affairs
For: Director-General