By Aphua Larbi (https://aphualarbi.wordpress.com)
I have been staring at my phone screen for a three weeks trying to find a way to write this post. I needed to find a way for it to make sense to me.
Over the past week, the news item that interested me the most was the arrest of Artem Vaulin. This man is alleged to be the owner of the kickass torrent sites; which is considered to be the biggest piracy sites in the world. This site is behind most of the movies, albums and books illegally downloaded.
Piracy is defined as the unauthorized duplication of an original recording for commercial gain without the consent of the rights owner. Pirated products are copied and packaged to resemble the original as closely as possible.
In Ghana, piracy has been a big issue plaguing music and movie producers. The stakeholders in the Ghanaian music industry have been claiming that for over a decade music piracy has not only robbed Ghanaian musicians of their expected revenue, but significantly tampered with the quality of their products, thereby causing public disaffection against them.
The issue is that most artistes are not aware of the rights they have to their intellectual property rights. Also, the government and authorities in charge do not seem to care one way or another except to talk about it in seminars.
It seems like at this point most people don’t care because it’ll always be around. However, not caring enough and being proactive is going to see us still grapple with the issue. Entertainment is a big industry and if we do not wake up, piracy will be the reason most artistes will not reap the fruit of their labor.
