The Nigerian Copyright Commission will soon be conducting raids on MP3 dealers and outlets nationwide, according to its Director General, Mr Afam Ezekude.
The NCC may finally be coming to grips with what it has described as a relatively new form of piracy. Ezekude, speaking on Friday the 10th of June, warned that people who distribute artists’ songs as MP3 files without the copyright owner’s consent, were about to be hit hard.
“The anti-piracy raid on MP3 will start in major cities known to be piracy hubs across the six geo-political zones”, he said.
Ezekude told the press that the commission would be targeting anti-piracy hotspots in selected cities, including Alaba in Lagos, which he called the hub of piracy in the state.
“Other towns such as Ilorin, Ibadan, Yola, Kaduna, Enugu, Benin city as well as the Federal Capital Territory will also be checked”, he added.
The MP3, which uses a form of data compression, has become a common audio format for music storage, transfer and playback. It is this quality of file compression that makes it an appealing option for pirates. There have been predictions that the increasing availability of this format will contribute to the decline of the more traditional forms of piracy in the country, but musicians and others in the entertainment industry have in recent times lamented that MP3’s have become a big challenge.
“MP3 is a cankerworm that is killing the entertainment industry”, Nollywood movie producer Ossy Okeke complained. He addressed NCC management who had sent out officials to confiscate and destroy pirated materials in Enugu earlier this year. “Please do something to address the issue of MP3”, he pleaded.
It appears that Ossy Okeke and other stakeholders in the Nigerian entertainment industry are finally about to have their request granted.