For the Chief Executive Officer, Musical Copyright Society Nigeria (MCSN), Mayo Ayilaran, there is a big difference between radio and television license fees collected by the local governments in the country and copyright license fees.
According to Ayilaran, radio and television license fees are the internally generated revenues of the local governments, which is on the residual list of Section1 (b) of the Fourth Schedule of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, while copyright license fee is a requirement under the exclusive list of the constitution under Section 251(1)(f), item 13 of the Second Schedule. This, he explained further, is the clear distinction between the two, besides the Copyright Act of 2004, which requires license for the use of music for commercial purposes.
Speaking as a guest at the 27th Annual General Meeting of Nigeria Hotel Association (NHA) in Abuja recently, Ayilaran informed that the gains of exploiting music for commercial purposes with permission are more than the painful consequences of doing so without permission.
“If one uses music of whatever form in his or her business like running a hotel, bar, nightclub, restaurant or fuel stations, it is way cheaper to obtain a license (permission) for such. The consequences of not doing so can be disastrous if the owners of the copyright in the works take them to court,” he said.
Continuing, Ayilaran said, “The license that can cost you just a few thousands of naira to obtain can lead to one loosing hundreds of millions of naira in damages in court. A very good example is a cable television provider that needed to obtain license for some thousands of naira annually but refused. MCSN then sued the company for infringing on its copyright. The court agreed with MCSN and awarded historic damages of over N5 billion against the company. That’s the danger businesses that exploit music for commercial purposes without permission are exposed to.”
To avoid such exposures, he advised that it pays both MCSN and those exploiting its repertoire for profit to seek permission because the society was established to protect the work of authors (composers, creators and publishers) and also be of service to users in their exploitation of music, (both local and foreign) with ease, because it represents the creators and authors of such works from around the world.