23rd November, 2023
By Oluwatofunmi Adedokun
The president Directors Guild of Nigeria, Victor Okhai, has said piracy can only be mitigated to the bearest minimum but cannot be totally eradicated.
The co-founder of the Directors’ Guild of Nigeria disclosed this at a roundtable to address the rising challenges of piracy hosted by MultiChoice, Africa’s leading entertainment company.
The event tagged ‘Piracy Untells Our Stories’ was held on November 22, at MultiChoice Meeting room in Lagos.
The event featured in-depth discussions, knowledge sharing, and the formulation of effective countermeasures to combat piracy in the digital age.
According to Okhai, as technology gets more sophisticated, the pirates find new ways of doing what they do.
“So the answer is, it can be mitigated but can’t be entirely eliminated,” he disclosed.
“I think the concept of a thief is a thief, If we don’t treat it properly then we may not succeed in this fight. We are calling a pirate thief, we’ve forgotten that the people who buy are the ones stealing more because if there is no market then, there will be no piracy,” he said.
The veteran scriptwriter and movie producer also urged people who patronized or buy pirated content to desist.
“I think it is important for us to school people patronizing the piracy and what damage they’re doing and the fact is that they are collaborators. I say so because deep down at the heart of everyone, there is this little thing called a conscience and so there are people who pirate works who should go and buy but they don’t buy because piracy is not only from the big people, when you do that even in your community you’re also a pirate.
“If you can, through enlightenment, I believe, every strongly in it and they let people know what damage they are doing and let them know that they are thieves as well. Perhaps it might discourage some of them from stealing.
“When you photocopy a whole textbook you know what it means. There is a need for us to begin to see what we do.
“King of Thieves is released instead of you to go and buy or go to the cinema you say please can you copy this for me? You don’t care where you got it from. But when you do that you’re stealing from that producer.
“There are a lot of producers who borrow money, sell their properties, or take loans to fund these projects, and then they produce, and the next thing, someone is offering their work inside traffic. That person may never be recovered.
“So it is important to speak to those who are buying too, let us start thinking about it,” he added.