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Legislator appeals to govt over piracy

Life & Style
BULILIMA West legislator Dingumuzi Phuti has called on government to stamp its authority and deal with the scourge of piracy to ensure that artists from different disciplines reap the rewards of their labour.

BY SHARON SIBINDI

BULILIMA West legislator Dingumuzi Phuti has called on government to stamp its authority and deal with the scourge of piracy to ensure that artists from different disciplines reap the rewards of their labour.

Phuti, who is a former ZBC DJ and a Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (Zimura) board member, told NewsDay Life and Style that there was need for government to ensure the implementation of the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Acts to the letter.

“It should be thorough on making sure that there is marriage between the copyright infringers and the knowledge by the judiciary on how to apply punitive measures to those who infringe upon other people’s creativity, which is the intellectual property component of creation,” he said.

Phuti said artists had lost money due to piracy and some died paupers because they were robbed of their potential earnings through piracy.

“Musicians are losing money from people who pirate their products. They go without getting any cent from it because the person with the gadget that burns a CD and the person who sells the CD on the street both don’t know the value of getting into the studio to record, to pay session musicians, to market your album, to make sleeve designs and to have a polished component or product as a result having it vigorously promoted through live shows, adverts and many more,” he said.

Phuti added that art goes beyond just entertainment and called on the Justice ministry to review patent fees to ensure that artists could register their trademarks.

“All these people who are inventors, those people that create, those people that put an idea and life into something in order for it to be usable by public, they have to be given the commercial value of their hard thinking, the creativity should also assist them to be more creative because that is an incentive for creativity,” he said.