In our final installment of Little Leo’s chat* with Phil
Chard of African Hip Hop Blog, we discuss non-disclosure agreements,
international appeal and the role of the legal system in strengthening the
music industry in Africa. (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4.)
Little Leo: You
mentioned in this instance with the Zambian case {see end of part
3}, there’s agreements that the artists have signed maybe not fully aware
of all of the rights that they were signing over. You’ve also talked about
how you’ve gone into meetings with companies where it’s being down as a pitch
for your ideas but then they run with it and don’t come back to you. How frequent are agreements in those kinds of
situations? Are people using
nondisclosure agreements? Are people in
the industry aware of what’s in their agreements? Is there a high-level of legal agreement use,
or other types of practices?
Phil: It’s really on
a case-by-case basis. There are times
when companies have approached me and they have wanted to be partners in
whatever ventures they were doing and they presented NDAs. In certain instances, for example if a pitch
has gone to tenders where there’s a lot of different people pitching, in the
beginning signing an NDA never crossed our minds. We were like, “Ok, since this a reputable
institution and they’ve got a lot of people pitching to them, why would this
happen?”
There have been other times where it was like a job
interview. I had recently left my old
job and someone had suggested. “Phil, you’d actually be a perfect fit for this
company A. Why don’t you speak to this
individual and just highlight what you plan to do or what value you can bring
to the company and then hear what he says.”
So that’s exactly what I did. I
emailed him, he said “Ok Phil, just give me a brief idea of what you’ve done,
what you can do, what you see.” I sent
him a two-pager just highlighting what I noticed inadequacies were, where I
could step in and I could assist.
Thereafter, he never really got back to me. I saw him a couple other times after
that. He basically brushed me off. And then, I start to see them implementing
changes that are very similar to the issues I had pointed out.
In such an instance, unless I can point to meeting minutes
that they had that show I sent this email on this date, he suggested this
change on this date, that shows that he’s taking my stuff, it really is a messy
situation. And the moment that you
pursue that, you’re now making an enemy of that organization. This industry is so small, very soon you need
to work with that organization, so you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
L: A lot of times when I’m talking to people about international
music and international agreements with respect to copyright and things, a big
issue that comes up is, “well, artists need to decide whether to sing in their
local language or to sing in English in order to get national renown.” And it least so far, it seems African artists
aren’t thinking that they need to choose that.
What is your perspective on that?
P: It’s a double-edged sword. I think, in the beginning, especially in hip
hop, a lot of African artists did that.
So, they all stuck to English and it limited their audiences a great
deal. The moment artists started
realizing that “first of all I need to appeal to the people that look like me,
that are from my region, that are from my area, tell them stories in their
languages,” things started really blowing up.
And there’s value to having your own identity as opposed to being a
carbon copy. I’ve always said that,
especially if you’re trying to appeal to Americans, Americans will not buy
someone that sounds like an artist that they can get down the street.
L: That’s true.
P: They’re looking for something original. If you aren’t being original, then what’s
your appeal?
L: I don’t want to take up much more of your time, this has
been very generous of you. Last question
just to sum things up and bringing it back to intellectual property and kind of
that legal aspect. During your rant,
somebody had kind of piped in and said, “well how do you sum up the
industry?” And you said, “We need more
authenticity, more integration, better standards.” How can the law or the legal system help with
that?
P: Um…
L: Or can’t it? Maybe
that’s the answer.
P: In certain aspects, it can’t. In protecting intellectual property, it’s
there. But there’s also the situation
where the laws haven’t really been tested, so you can’t point to exact
instances where the law failed to protect the interests of the artists or vice
versa.
What definitely needs to happen is there needs to be a lot
of education. A lot of sensitization as
to the value of property, as to who owns what and how those relationships
work. Like I said, consumers need to
understand that pirating content is illegal, because it has become such a norm
here where people who don’t have a satellite subscription are watching Game of Thrones and they don’t realize
that they’re breaking the law. The same
thing with downloading albums. There’s
so many instances where, for example, an artist will release an album on
iTunes---K.O.’s done this a couple of times.
So there’s an artist called K.O. in South Africa,
their policy is ‘we do not release free music. Our content is of a quality that
should be paid for at all times.” So they’ll
release a song on iTunes, but fans who can’t afford iTunes don’t get it. You’ll find instances where a fan will then
download that song and then upload it to a data file host and will be proud of
it and will be sharing the link and be like “dude, I’m a fan, I love you; I’m
making sure everyone hears your work.”
And they have no understanding of what they’re doing.
Then on the flipside, artists also need to understand that
just because the artist you’re taking your content from is American, it’s still
a copyright infringement. And their
motivation behind that, I actually don’t know or understand it. But there’s so many instances where they’re
blatantly stealing melodies and music and interpolations from American artists.
And then they’ll try and pass it off as their own. And then the same with blogs. Almost every other week I come across a blog
that’s blatantly stealing our content.
And they don’t even credit us, and they’re of the assumption that “no,
I’m promoting you because I’m using your logo.”
But I’m like “that doesn’t benefit me in any manner, shape or form.” Or even with crediting, I have my issues with
that because even though you might steal my content word-for-word and then
credit me properly at the bottom of the page, that doesn’t really benefit me in
any manner, shape or form, because all the traffic is going to you, all the ad
revenue is going to you, and I get nothing but a permalink.
I think it’s first of all educating and sensitizing the
whole industry as to what’s required of them, what intellectual property
actually means, and then how to enforce it.
And then once we get there, we can start gauging as to whether or not
the legal side of the industry is benefiting or hindering us.
L: Alright, I think that will wrap it up. Thank you again, so much. Really appreciate it.
Little Leo would like to extend thanks to Phil for sitting down to share his perspectives with the Afro-IP community. There is a lot of information here that can help those of us who strive to help people working in the continent's music industries. Phil's ending comments reinforce that we have a lot of educational work ahead of us.
You can find Phil on Twitter at @PhilChard.
*The conversation has been edited for clarity and reading ease; it is not an exact transcript.
