COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IN NIGERIA AND CHALLENGES IN A DIGITAL WORLD
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
It is a known fact that the greatest heritage of a nation remains the creativity of its citizens, and therefore one of the primary functions of law enforcement agents and other appropriate authorities is to protect the ingenuity, resourcefulness and innovation of the citizenry. However, Nigeria has joined the league of nations that have enacted domestic legislations to protect the copyrights and creativity of its citizens against any undue infringement. The principal legislation in this regard is the Nigerian Copyright Act, which is hinged on the fact that any copyright infringement is stealing (Thomson, 2009). Since the beginning of the 20th century, the world has continued to experience astronomical advancement in scientific and technological innovations which have changed the face of modern society, leading many thinkers to term this present civilization ‘the jet age’ (Ajirere, 2008). This technological advancement has had enormous impact on the world’s copyright enforcement authorities and the legal systems in general, disrupting traditional modes of protection of intellectual property, and has left the law completely in a state of flux, literally gasping to catch pace with the ever changing forms of innovations (Ethan, 1992). In Nigeria, the life of every average citizen now revolves around one or more of these technologies, such as computers including palmtops and hi-tech phones, satellite and cable receivers/signals, facsimile transmissions and the perpetually growing internet (Ayemi, 2010).
Over the years, since the country achieved independence, Nigeria has benefited immensely from the magnanimity of copyright related products. Section 1(1) of the Copyright Act provides protection and confers copyright status on the following innovative products: literary works, musical works, artistic works, cinematograph films, sound recordings, and broadcasts. The spectrum of these products implicitly covers digital innovations like computer software, satellite and cable broadcasts, and reprographic transmissions. Thus, as at 2008, the totality of copyright based industries operating in the country contributed just about N1.2 trillion to the Nigeria gross domestic income, a figure publicly made known by the authorities during the 50th anniversary of the Nigerian Copyright Commission (Ayemi, 2010).
Notwithstanding the above, and especially the enormous benefits which the country has derived from copyright related products, Nigeria still remains the largest piracy destination and market in the world invariably in the same products ostensibly protected by the Copyright Act, particularly computer software. This is due to a number of factors, essentially bordering on the obsolescence and inability of the Act to meet contemporary challenges in the protection of copyrights of particularly new genres of innovations within the above broadly provided products. Also, though Nigeria is signatory to various international conventions on copyright protection, these conventions are hardly enforceable in Nigeria owing to the fact that they have not been domesticated
.