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Hope Masike and Alexio Gwenzi
Copyright Academy
Copyright law does not only cover the exploitation of music on traditional platforms such as television and radio.
In this day and age, copyright becomes more important as music consumption platforms increase.
The digital era we are in demands that copyright law also covers the consumption of music on digital platforms and in all digital formats.
Most generally speaking, and as a reminder, copyright is a bundle of rights one has over their artistic work. Copyright entails the control that the owner has over their work and its usage.
Therefore law — every artiste has every right to decide and act on where and how their music is broadcast, whatever the format.
This includes platforms such as Deezar, Spotify, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, TV, and Radio social media pages, and even personal blogs.
Musicians registered to ZIMURA, as stakeholders of the association, mandate ZIMURA (through CAPASSO) to keep track of all their music broadcasts on the digital space, be they webcasts or streams.
Much as numerous broadcasters may not adhere to it, according to copyright law, this usage of music must be licensed.
Strictly speaking, in the same way, that our conventional broadcasters pay for licences to broadcast works by musicians, anyone posting on any social media platforms for commercial or social capital gain must obtain a licence from a collective society such as ZIMURA.
CAPASSO, Digital Rights Licensing Agency, is a South African company that was mandated by the rest of Southern African CMOs (Collective Management Organisations) to do this tracking.
They give regular detailed accounts as well as royalties at an administrative commission.
Once ZIMURA, the CAPASSO-recognised CMO in Zimbabwe, receives these royalties, it distributes them to the respective artists as and when it come.
The rights of an artist is well-explained in the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act Chapter 26:05, Section: 9 fully defines Copyright, Section 15 states the legal duration of copyright, Section 17 stipulates the exact rights one can exercise over their work, and Section 24, among other scope-related matters, talks about limitations and exceptions of copyright law.
Section 51 talks about who and how infringement of copyright is done, and Section 59 then talks about penalties and fines in relation to copyright infringement.
These are key sections that any interested musician must study and or assign ZIMURA to oversee.
It is important to know that people who record and post a musician’s live performance have their rights too, stipulated under the above-mentioned Section 24.
When a media house or an individual records and streams or later posts a musician’s public performance, at times they are well within their rights.
This is permissible if they are covering it for parliamentary discourse, educational analysis, news coverage, research data, and other purposes.
However, usage and exploitation of these works must always be with consent from the artist, especially when there are financial and/or social capital benefits involved.
Furthermore, this also depends on how much of the content is recorded and posted.
For instance, posting a full-length song and/or full concert without the musician’s permission can easily be illegal.
Whereas, anyone, from fans to broadcasters can easily illegally post a snippet of a song.
When one decides to cover an artiste’s live performance, it is important to note that besides financial and social capital gain matters, artists are also sometimes concerned by the quality of these recordings, particularly where they cannot monitor it.
In other instances, the musician is concerned by the quality of their performance at that particular event. These matters when unmonitored, may easily have negative impacts on the artiste’s brand reputation.
Much as ZIMURA does cover these types of rights where live shows are concerned, it can only go as far as licensing the venues for public performance-licensing broadcasters, and receiving the artiste’s live performance forms that will be used for distribution purposes.
Live performance forms are not yet popular or regularly used by artistes in Zimbabwe.
Unfortunately, this is the only legal route.
ZIMURA may have the mandate to protect these rights but doesn’t have control over the media houses that record and post live content at any artiste’s event.
According to their brand relations with media and fans, this right remains with the musician.
Online Reporter