Anti-piracy campaign for SA
The department of trade and industry said on Thursday it will launch an anti-piracy campaign next month to protect artists’ copyright to their work and a commission to investigate wrongdoing by royalty collecting societies.
Deputy Minister Thandi Tobias-Pokolo said the commission will be headed by a judge, but declined to give further information on its composition, powers or life span.
She said both the campaign and the commission were a response to complaints from artists about piracy, incorrect distribution of royalties and a lack of government support.
Problems surrounding royalties were “blamed as a cause leading to artists dying poor,” she told a media briefing in Cape Town.
Tobias-Pokolo said the campaign would also serve to educate artists to protect their rights and not to sign these away for “20 or 40 years” and then take the law into their own hands by confiscating counterfeit products from street vendors.
“We want to avoid artists taking the law into their own hands and losing.”
She said five government departments would be involved in the campaign, including the police and communications, which will be asked to look into artists complaints of not being paid their dues by the SABC.
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