Windhoek
Social networks were abuzz with news last week that one of Namibia’s leading artists, The Dogg, had confiscated up to nine music jukeboxes from their owners in Katutura’s Eveline Street, after he found that the machines were loaded with his music without a copyright licence.
The Dogg, real name Martin Morocky, asked the owners of the confiscated machines to pay a penalty of N$15 000 each as a pre-condition for the return of their machines.
“We removed their jukeboxes and they will have to pay a penalty of N$15 000 to get their jukeboxes back,” The Dogg said on his official Facebook fan page.
“We are busy with operations as we speak. No mercy on anybody, it is a business decision! I have sleepless nights working on my work and spend up to N$100 000 not for you to benefit for doing nothing,” the outspoken artist said.
All jukebox owners must make sure they get their Mshasho licence for N$500 per jukebox per annum for them to load any Mshasho Records music on their jukeboxes, The Dogg said.
A frustrated fan, Oscar Mathew B-Man, commented on his post: “I am Mshasho fan and I have all The Dogg’s albums in my collection. The thing is I don’t understand Mshasho licence. Ok I buy the CD, pay Nascam [Namibian Society of Composer and Authors of Music] and again Mshasho jukebox licence?”
According to the Mshasho Records CEO, Knowledge Iipinge, the majority of MP3 jukebox owners do not buy CDs but load artists’ music illegally onto their hard drives, which is another infringement of what is known as reproduction rights.
“Intellectual property rights grant the owner of musical works (“artist”, “record label” or “publisher”) the right to either exploit it or prevent another (“for example, jukebox owners”) from using and/or exploiting it for commercial gain without prior consent. If the right is used or exploited without the consent of the owner, this amounts to infringement which is a criminal activity,” Iipinge told New Era.
The CEO of Nascam, John Max, says The Dogg has the right to confiscate people’s jukeboxes as long as he does it with the assistance of the police. “What The Dogg is doing is reacting on the pain he went through during the production period of his latest album, Respect My Hustle, as he has spent valuable time and money to make his album a success for him as professional songwriter and his family to survive,” says Max.
Speaking about the penalty, Max says the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act provides a penalty of between N$2 000 and N$20 000 or three to five years’ imprisonment for any copyright violation. Max added that Nascam issues the copyright music licence or performance rights licence, which only allows jukebox owners to make use of music in any public place where every member of the public can freely move, stay or gather, while the Mshasho licence is called a mechanical rights licence, which covers any changes that may occur when the musical works have been used in an unusual form from its original, like copying, cutting, rearranged, mixed, downloaded, loaded, streamed, modified, sampled, or used as background sound in a film/movie, advertisement and as a signature tune.