GHAMRO ready to fight music piracy

The management of Ghana Music Right Organisation (GHAMRO) has declared its readiness to fight music pirates until all intellectual property thieves whose activities are impoverishing copyright owners are flushed out of the system and brought to justice.

The organisation also promised that it will not relent in its efforts to bring to an end the nefarious operations of music pirates who build their wealth on copyright theft.

GHAMRO management made its intentions known at a one-day copyright workshop for selected members of the police, copyright monitoring team and GHAMRO enforcement team.

The copyright workshop which was held in Kumasi was part of the series of measures adopted by the newly-elected GHAMRO board led by Rex Omar to ensure the enforcement of the Copyright Act and music piracy.

GHAMRO added that workshops are essential because of the music piracy menace that has engulfed the country through illegal music downloads on pen drives, MP3 and other storage devices without the authorisation of the music right owners.

It mentioned that that these illegal acts have denied music right owners of the economic benefits of their works because of low patronage of legitimate music sales.

Addressing participants at the workshop, the board chairman, Rex Omar, pledged to protect the intellectual property of music right owners against any form of abuse or violation.

He pointed out that in this digital age, technology platforms have provided users’ easy access to music without the authorisation from the right owners, adding that “it is, therefore, imperative to protect and regulate the commercial usage of music, especially on digital platforms, to ensure that any person who trades using music is properly granted permission by the licensed collecting society, GHAMRO, so that the requisite royalties is paid for music usage.”

Resource persons at the workshop included Kwme Anyimadu Antwi, MP for Asante Akim Central (former Copyright Deputy Attorney), and Jonathan Cudjoe, General Manager for GHAMRO.

As a follow-up to the police workshop in Kumasi, GHAMRO will hold a similar workshop for selected sections of the media today at the conference room of the copyright office in Accra at 10:00am.