SPORTS MINISTRY TO LEAP IN ON COPYRIGHTS MOVEMENT

MBABANE – This past weekend at the Social Media Awards a concern over artists’ work and protection was raised, with solutions to be implemented.

Phinda Nkhosi, Director of Arts and Culture, spoke on behalf of the Minister of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs Harries ‘Madze’ Bulunga. He mentioned that they too as a body had heard the cries of local artists about the protection of their work. This was a suitable platform to speak on the matter as the entire room was filled with creatives from across the fields of entertainment in the kingdom.

Helps

Also, the award ceremony is one that helps remove barriers to trade, mobilise investment, foster a good environment for business and promote good practice in corporate governance and corporate citizenship. Which means when one has mastered the art of making a business out of the trade, the need arises to protect their work. During his speech, Nkhosi mentioned that it was gatherings like these which made the ministry see the importance of helping local creatives, because they were becoming more innovative and they were fast grasping international standards.

Which meant that their work would be on international standards which are a very competitive and rather vicious space? “We have gathered that the artist body needs aid and the ministry along with the newly- formed society, will work hand in hand to give artists a safe platform to express themselves,” said Nkhosi on behalf of the minister.    

Tangible

Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression. Copyright generally exists automatically in all types of creative content. The purpose of copyright is to protect the author’s or artist’s intellectual creation in their work and provides the expectation that, unless licenced to a third party, they have the exclusive right to use their work and make money from it. In Eswatini, the Copyrights Act was enacted on March 16, this year, by law to protect the original work of artists.

Their main objective is generally to induce and reward artists through provision of property rights and artist’s works are available for the public to enjoy. The Copyright Society is a collection management organisation (CMO), whose main role will be to represent the copyright interests of artists that will register as members of the society.

Copyrighted

The main activities of the society will include setting royalty rates, licencing copyrighted works to users, monitoring compliance of users, collecting royalties (from users like the broadcasters and others) on behalf of artists who are registered members of the society and distributing those royalties to the relevant artists. Although there is a long way to go before any physical action by the society can be taken, the Board Chairperson of the Copyright Society, Samkeliso Nxumalo, previously mentioned that they were at 50 per cent and only had to hire a secretariat.

“The Board is fully formed. Its induction has been completed with its foundational ‘Action Plan’ also been completed. Our procurement procedure was approved and adopted on October 4. This means that we now have our procurement structure in place and now that this critical internal structure is in place, the next step will be to hire the secretariat using the procurement procedure that has been recently adopted,” mentioned Nxumalo.
The secretariat is the team of professionals who will manage and run the operations of the Copyright Society.

Tracking

The secretariat will be responsible for registering works, setting rates, licencing works, tracking usage of works, calculating royalties dues, collecting royalties and distributing royalties. It will consist of the following key personnel: The director, the licencing officer, the documentation officer and the royalty management officer.The recruitment of the secretariat will be conducted by a professional recruitment agency to be selected by the board. 
Therefore, the plans going forward are as follows:
a)     Complete the recruitment of the secretariat.
b)     Training and empowerment of the secretariat.
c)     Hosting stakeholder seminars to discuss and develop the systems that need to be put in place to create an ecosystem that can effectively register works, set royalty rates, licence works, track usage, collect royalties and distribute royalties. The two entities will join forces to make this process faster for artists.

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