“The Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) Wednesday disclosed that a new bill would be drafted next year to tackle digital and on-line piracy in the country.
Deputy Director and Head, Public Affairs Department of the commission, Mr. Aderemi Adewusi, disclosed this during a courtesy visit to THISDAY Abuja office.
“Shortly, we will be drafting a new copyright act which shall be passed into law come next year. “It will replace the old act and the major reform has to do with digital and internet piracy. We’ve gotten assistance from multi-nationals like Microsoft, Google and Multi-Choice,” he said.
He added: “The initiative, which began this year, involves Google, which has trained our staff on how to tackle on-line piracy. That is where Google comes in. Shortly, we shall be signing an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with them to provide us with infrastructure on how to tackle piracy and Google will help us with the machinery we need in order to monitor and regulate things like that and we are working on this aspect.”
Concerning the Act, he said they had had meetings with the stakeholders and that there was already a draft bill, which would be presented shortly, adding that it was in its final phase of consultation and would be presented when ready.
Speaking further, Aderemi said the NCC had achieved a lot, despite its challenges in both human and financial resources.
“We have won several convictions in cases brought against pirates and between January and July, we have seized about N1.1 billion worth of materials. We’ve got 109 cases awaiting prosecution,” he said. . .”
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