The Nigerian Publishers Association (NPA) has disclosed its collaboration with the National Copyright Commission (NCC) to fight against piracy. Speaking at a meeting at Ikeja, Lagos, the NPA condemned activities of pirates resulting into loses for publishers.

Director General of the NCC, Mr John Asein, revealed that strategies are already mapped out against piracy in the book industry: “I really want us to do things differently. We would work more with schools and bookshops we should do more inspections that would not allow pirates to work easily.

“We would introduce a framework. We would begin to look at the distribution chains. Before you can stock books beyond the threshold, NCC must be aware and we must know where your warehouse is located. We would take record of those who have volumes and where you are stocking and the reason. If you are not a publisher or an accredited distributor and you have a warehouse with books then you must explain. We would regulate and find out who is stocking books.”

He added that a two-layered anti-piracy device is now necessary as this would help schools and other end consumers distinguish easily between genuine books and counterfeit ones: “In this case, you have the hologram that we all know and the SMS based device that the consumer can scratch and confirm if the book is from the publisher.

“It would, however, start out as a voluntary scheme. Publishers who want to use it would be invited and once they buy into that scheme, they would be on our protection list. Those titles would be on our watch list as well.”

The Director General also stated that the import policy would be revisited. He said the NCC would submit a list of accredited book importers to the customs service granting the permission to arrest anyone whose name is not found on the list but in custody of imported books:

Related News

“We must intercept and disrupt their pirate plan. By 2020, NCC would introduce these strategies to begin to fight book piracy.” He urged the publishers to show more appreciation to the Federal Government for its support while encouraging individual publishers to have anti-piracy plans: “If your return is N100 million, you should be able to set one per cent to protect those rights. Commit funds to anti-piracy funds.”

President of the NPA, Mr Gbadega Adedapo, said the association has been glossing on piracy issues for so many years. He believed that with its collaborative effort with the NCC, piracy in the publishing sector would soon be resolved. He encouraged publishers to dedicate more time to attend meetings and contribute towards solving the outstanding problems.

Mr Femi Anulopo of Learning Solutions said piracy issue is long overdue and it was high time government intervene because it has eaten deep into the book market: “Otherwise a lasting solution is found, creativity would die because people would not want to write and foreign collaborators would not be willing to invest.

“It has impact on the chain. Printers would not have jobs to produce so with this new management in NCC injecting new ideas and vigours, we are hopeful that the much awaited sanitization would take place such that you have authentic products in terms of publications freely flowing through the right chain to the end consumers and I am sure every player and stakeholder would want to collaborate with the new management.”

The meeting passed a resolution to burn recovered pirated books within a stipulated period of time in an open place.