When Ugandan musicians met the
president at a evening siesta dubbed Tubonge along the shores of L Victoria at Speke
Resort Munyonyo, it was a funfair. Spiced with music, comedy and camera
flashlights, the venue was a chatterbox filled with Uganda’s unedited musical voices.
At the end of the sumptuous meal, the
president promised a sweetening package of 400 million shillings to be put in
their support fund. Accusations and counter accusations of ‘misappropriation’ of
the funds are already boiling.
One of the scorns they woke up to a
day later was of meeting the president and failing to raise issues of copyright
for their music. In defense, some say it was a wrong forum for such an issue.
Music industry in Uganda is still disorganized,
and as a result under rewarding in the long term. Ask James Wasula, secretary general of the Uganda Performing Rights Society
(UPRS), a collecting society managing music performing rights. Whereas UPRS
has a structure for collecting fees from users of music; radio stations,
hotels, conference venues, discotheques among others, the collections are
meager.
Despite the increase
in numbers of potential collection points, the individual benefits of artists from
their works are short lived, in relation to copyright aspects. Commercial benefits
of music and artistic works in Uganda are catered for under the Copyright and
Neighbouring Rights Act, 2006 and the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights
Regulations of 2010.
The implementation of
this act is the problem, not the lack of a presidential statement at a dinner
besides a lake.
In this crowded city, musicians get
their money from concert/musical performance sales, corporate endorsements,
participation in commercials and other social performance gigs. The CD sales,
airplay revenue and royalties are just a peanut that would not meet the cost of
the next trip to the recording studio.
An announcement by the president at Munyonyo
would have little, if any, effect to the copyright implementation.In fact, he
has through his government set for them the ground to achieve more than a mere
statement. The acts and regulations have been passed to cater for intellectual
property, and that contains copyright issues. Institutions like police, judiciary, Uganda RegistrationService Bureau are already in place.
The artists themselves are supposed to be ‘lead
actors’ in promoting the copyright benefits of their work.
