[Ecommerce] Ghana: Copyrights Bill an affront to Folkloric music

[Manon Ress]

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/entertainment/artikel.php?ID=78744

Copyrights Bill an affront to Folkloric music- Expert
Accra, April 6, GNA - An International Folklore Expert on Wednesday
criticised clauses in the new Copyright Bill before Cabinet that made it
mandatory for Ghanaians to pay royalty for the commercial use of folklore.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to the Ghana News Agency, in
Accra, the Expert described the Bill as totalitarian and also
contravened conventions on human rights.

He mentioned specifically the clause that imposed a fine, jail or both
on any Ghanaians who commercially use, sell or distribute Ghanaian
folklore or translations without Government's permit. The Senior
Lecturer at the University of Ghana said the Bill would create a
terrible situation for the future well being of the country's culture,
which required a constant dynamic recycling to stay alive in the Global
Village.

He said in the modern world, cultural recycling also included commercial
recycling.

The International Folklore Expert identified six specific problems the
proposed Copy Rights Bill would create with particular emphasis on the
folklore royalty tax.

It includes: the stunting of interpersonal, oral and informal cultural
creativity; generational cultural adoption, which he said would alienate
the youth from their indigenous roots. He observed that if Ghanaians are
taxed out of their own culture they would be ever more inundated by free
Western culture.

He questioned how the implementers of the Bill would be able to
differentiate between Ghanaian folklore and that of neighbouring African
countries?

"Who exactly owns the Agbadza and Gahu traditional drum-dances of Ghana,
Togo and Benin, or the kente cloth of Ghana and La Cote d' Ivoire?"

He said the Bill would also create a conflict between the Government and
custodians of culture and tradition, explaining that it would be
difficult to establish the one who owns for instance the Adinkra symbol.
Is it Asantes or the state?

"By putting brakes on Ghanaian folkloric development these clauses may
enhance the influx of free western cultural and folkloric norms, and
other components of Western 'cultural imperialism' that are already
flooding into Ghana," he said.

The expert said African folkloric music and dance form an important
component of the lucrative international 'World Music,' market that
currently generates 1.5 billion dollars a year.

The Bill he said would interfere with the growth of folkloric music as a
potential non-traditional export and have a negative impact on the
Ghanaian tourist industry.

The International Folklore Expert said the World Intellectual Property
Organisation (WIPO) recommended in the 1980's that, in the light of the
extreme economic imbalance in the world, developing nations should
nationalize their folklore in respect to its commercial exploitation by
Industrial 'First World' nations.

"Folklore from any country had been considered a common heritage for
anyone to use freely," he explained.

In short WIPO recognized that the world is not an equal playing-field
and made recommendations to protect and compensate developing nations
whose folklore was being commercially exploited by companies in the
industrial nations.

However, WIPO in its 1989 report on the 'Protection of Expression of
Folklore' made it quite clear (pages 10,11) that this
protection/taxation of the folklore of developing nations should only
apply 'outside the country or origin'. It was never meant to be applied
internally.

He said Ghana was among the pioneers to carry out legislation in line
with the WIPO.

Provisions have been made in the Bill for the collection of foreign
folkloric royalties.

He said the establishment of the National Folklore Board of Trustees was
to take an inventory of all Ghanaian folklore and monitor its commercial
use abroad.
--
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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