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 The Post (Buea)
Eric Ofeh
Music pirating is so entrenched in Cameroon that it is unlikely to ever be eradicated.
In fact, pirating is so prevalent in the country that legitimate stores and hawkers sell openly pirated CDs.
The CDs come shrink-wrapped, complete with slick
pictures of artists "burnt" on them and cost as little as FCFA 500.
Yet, despite the incredibly low price and packaging, the CD is most
likely a pirated copy. The pirates are so good, hardly anyone can tell
the difference.
Every musician in Cameroon
gets almost no income from CD sales, even though thousands of their CDs
might be sold. Because, as soon as a CD is made, the pirates pick it,
copy it and are on the street, offering them for less than a fraction
of the retail price. The legitimate CDs all but vanish.
The
pirated CD hawkers say they make enormous gains since the authentic CDs
are very expensive, sometimes costing as much as FCFA 3000. Having
procured a pirated CD for FCFA 250 and selling it at FCFA 500, a
hawker, therefore, nets 100 percent profit.
One other dealer said he can buy CDs for FCFA 40,000 and sell them in less than a week.
Dealers in pirated CDs say they source the counterfeit from Douala Central Market, Baffoussam and some people who own computers.
Nonetheless,
it is not all raking in the profits. A dealer based in Buea said "even
though we have these benefits, we also encounter a lot of problems with
the police and the Cameroon music society, which often seize the CDs,
especially those composed by Cameroonians."
Sometimes,
some of the pirated CDs do not play well which is a big problem between
the pirates and their customers.The dealer added that they always try
to dodge the police and the Cameroon music society. But whenever they
are caught, they have to cough up as much as FCFA 60,000 and the CDs
are destroyed.
At times though, said the
dealer, they bribe the police or Cameroon music society; so they avoid
going to jail and having the CDs destroyed or just
confiscated.Consumers of pirated music and movie CDs have come to
believe that dubbing and selling someone else's music are totally
acceptable.
That is quite nice for consumers,
really bad for record companies and retailers but terrible for
artists.Most of the consumers say that things are hard and they cannot
afford to buy a CD at FCFA 3000 when they can pick one cheaply, for a
mere FCFA 500. But some people think that since the pirates deprive
artists of well-deserved incomes, they should be severely punished.
Others
said the police and the Cameroon music society should be held
responsible because they receive money from the pirates and encourage
them to go on with the illicit practice.
The
copyright pirates don't stop at CDs only. They do books, too.When The
Post accosted the police to comment on the piracy of copyrights
generally, a policeman attached to the Mobile Intervention Unit, GMI,
Roger Mefiri, said they caught a suspect in Mutengene with a carton of
pirated exercise books and some primary text books.
Mefiri
said the books most probably came from Nigeria although the suspect
claimed that they came from Douala.The police officer said the pirates
copy letter heads to print on papers which look like the originals.
He
said they are trying to establish how the pirates come into possession
of the letter heads; whether it is with the connivance of the book
companies or the pirates fabricate the letter heads themselves.
The Post also spoke to the Registrar of the Buea
High Court, Grace Kwalar, who said they have never handled any case of
piracy in Buea.She said she believed that most of such cases are solved
at the level of the police.
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Wal Fadjri
The
stage is set for the fourth and final leg of the 2008 THISDAY Music and
Fashion Festival tagged African Rising concert with the confirmation of
American pop/R&B singer, Christina Aguilera and Nigerian born
British soul singer, Seal (Henry Olumide Samuel) for the show.
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