Govt, intellectual property owners, lose huge revenue yearly

Dotun Alabi, the Chairman, Lagos State Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA), says piracy is depriving both intellectual property owners and government huge revenue yearly.

Alabi, a Lecturer at the Federal College of Education, Akoka, Lagos, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Sunday.

According to him, piracy has been detrimental to music, film and visual arts industries.

He said that the music and film sectors were more affected due to Audio-visual.

“Contemporary music in Nigeria have strong roots now than before with a little flavour of culture and this development attracted pirates to tap into such music to make money,’’ Alabi said.

“The new ideas, values lifestyles from the West and urban centres, which were incorporated into the music genre, made contemporary music to thrive.

“These include Juju, Afrobeat, Fuji, Gospel and Hip-hop and others. The new generation took Hip Hop to another level with the likes of P-Square, 2Face, 9ice, Ruggedman and others, ’’ he said.

Alabi noted that the visual arts industry was suffering because most of the works were pirated by those printing them as catalogue, on T-shirts and other materials without the consent of the copyright holder.