FIM Fights Piracy

MEMBERS OF the International Federation of Musicians (FIM) have expressed regret over the manufacturing of sophisticated piracy-friendly machines. Speaking at the federation’s annual meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, Mr. John Smith indicated that pirates take advantage of such digital revolution to exploit the owners of intellectual property rights by using those machines to pirate intellectual works. He advised those industrialists to pay attention to this glitch and confine their inventions in a manner that would help serve the interest of musicians worldwide and other intellectual owners. Members who attended the conference expressed grave concern about the negative impact of new digital equipment which had become so useful to music pirates. They were particularly worried about a new product described as “Blue Ray Player,” which they said was very sophisticated and was likely to be misused by music pirates. Ghana’s Chairman of the African Committee of the Federation, Alhaji Sidiku Buari called for negotiations with the manufacturers to consider withdrawing those products from the market or begin to manufacture them as players and not recorders. He said commercializing the players with recorders was highly detrimental to musicians in Africa, who were over-burdened with poor sales due to piracy. Another option, he indicated, was to adopt a system such that players cannot be used to duplicate audio or audio-visual works in commercial quantities. Alhaji Sidiku further suggested that manufacturers give rights to distributors whose output they can appropriately control so that the product is not abused. Meanwhile Alhaji Sidiku has expressed happiness that live band music is gradually bouncing back in countries like Ghana, South Africa and Malawi, adding that he hopes the fever would catch on with other countries on the continent.