South African and Nigerian copyright owners have accused mobile operators Vodacom and MTN of violating copyright laws,
and they’re asking for the sales data revenue generated from their hit singles sold as a download or ringtone to be audited.
They believe their copyright has been infringed.
DJ Cleo’s copyright lawyer believes their liability could run into the billions in unpaid royalties and fines in South Africa alone.
” If copies have been made without license that is infringement, that means customers and consumers of MTN and Vodacom could potentially be buying stolen goods. If there is an infringement, an offence and there will be a penalty for the offence the remedy of the first copy of the infringement is R5000 and some jail time. if you do the maths and understand that there might be millions of infringing articles and if the judge would decide to put R10,000 because their behaviour is flagrant this will sink both companies.” Graeme Gilfillan, Copyright Expert
But, DJ Cleo and Flavour are not the only copyright owners who are starting to ask questions and seek audits. Capasso, the body that collects mechanical royalty rights on behalf of songwriters, is also accusing MTN of not paying royalties.
” The evidence is there, they are selling the music, we know the music belongs to our members you go on to their website, their stores they are advertising the music for sale.If the 2014/2015 liabilities are not settled we will have no choice but to commence a legal process and really is because the copyright act does give copyright holder the right to have his music only sold with that persons permission and MTN is selling music that they do not have permission to sell.” Nothando Migogo, CEO, CAPASSO
But, the companies strongly deny the allegations and reject any suggestion of criminal misconduct.
” The gist of the dispute on this issue is nothing but duplicated claims, we understand very well the importance of paying for the music and we have always paid, we have always supported the South African artists and all artists that we play their music. For us it is a concern that we have paid Capasso and we have these claims that the artists have not received the payment, people should not be claiming artists that don’t belong to them, then we don’t have a problem.” Fusi Mokoena, General Manager legal – MTN
Both mobile operators have denied any wrongdoing and described the allegations as “ludicrous”. But, if the dispute continues and copyright owners can prove the alleged violations, there will be a hefty fine to pay.
