Carlos Sakyi Chides Government Officials For The High Rate Of Piracy In Ghana @ The MTN Ghana Music Awards Forum!

 Musician “Carlos Sakyi” has chided the government of Ghana for its inability to clampdown pirates at the entry point in the country. He said he has had the opportunity to ‘arrest’ a pirate. According to him, the [pirate] showed him documents of duties and receipts of money paid to the Customs to enable him enter the country with the pirated goods.

Delving more into the Copyright Laws and its inaccuracies in Ghana, he said under the Copyright Laws, one is allowed to bring something into the country for his or her personal use only and other than that, the things has to be scrutinized and the pirate arrested.

“Under Copyright Law, you can only bring in things for your personal use. So anything beyond a certain level has to go through a system. You must show that you have authority to exercise the right of a copyright owner. But these things come in and undermine our local things, destroy jobs and create unemployment,” he added.

Citing an instance to buttress his point raised above, he said “I bought a CD, I want to know what was on, it has about 80 different movies on it and it costs only GHC1.50,” this he said creates confusing between movie makers and the consumers. Because selling one local movie at GHC5.00 is seen as ripping off the consumer when he or she can actually purchase over 80 movies at just less than GHC1.00.

He was one of the speakers at the just ended 2011 edition of the MTN Ghana Music Awards Forum at
the Alisa Hotel on Tuesday morning. In his presentation, he said, no music industry [Ghana] can survive without the intervention of the government.

“The music industry or any other creative industry cannot survive without the government’s intervention, without government’s playing its part, without the right legal environment being created,” he said.

“If the courts are not operating properly and you arrest pirates, what happens? The judge has no idea; the prosecutor doesn’t know the Copyright Law, what is going to be done? Nothing! So the piracy has become high revenue earning income business for pirates”

The owner of Galaxy Entertainment, a music and Production Company in Ghana and a strong campaigner for copyrights owners said this when he had his turn to talk about Copyright and Royalties, specifically in the Ghana Music Industry and in entertainment industry as a whole.

According to the ace keyboardist “Pirating is link to organized crime and terrorism. It’s one of the easiest ways of making money”. He therefore calls for the right framework to be put in place and protect the intellectual property of Ghanaians “We need to protect our intellectual property”.

He urged for the need for the various government agencies such as the Customs to be strengthened, to be educated, sensitized and let them understand that they are contributing to very negative things.

He ended with an advice to the government: “All we [creative industry] want from government is to create a conducive environment, create a proper legal environment, prosecution matter, institutions are very critical for survival, we need to make sure all these institutions play their parts, the minister of Trade and the Minister of Justice have to make sure our laws are right, the court [judiciary] has a role to play” Not forgetting the president of Ghana. Even the president of Ghana also has a major role to play”.

The Forum is organized annually as an important aspect of the Award Festival and it affords industry professionals a unique opportunity to channel some of the attention garnered by the Awards Festival to push specific agenda of the industry.

The theme for the 2011 MTN Ghana Music Awards Forum was “Help grow our Music – The Role of the State, Media, Financial Institutions, Artistes, Producers and Marketers” and it was divided into five segments which were addressed by personalities in the various sector of the creative industry. They segments include: [1] Copyright & Royalties, [2] Distribution, [3] Music Union (MUSIGA), [4] Marketing & Promotion and [5] Events.

Presents at the forum was government officials, musicians, industry professionals and the media such Theresa Ayoade of Charter House, the chairman of the National Media Commission, former ambassador to Cote d’Ivoire Kabral Blay Amihere, President of Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA), Diana Hopeson, Deputy Minister for Tourism, James Agyenim Boateng and Hon. Hanna Tetteh, the Minister of Trade and Industry who doubled at the Chairperson for the event.

Musicians like Samini, D-Black, Kwabena Kwabena, Borax, Richie, Amandzeba Nat Brew, Mary Ghansah, No Tribe and others were present. The MTN Ghana Music Awards is scheduled for Saturday April 9, 2011 at the Dome at the Conference Centre.