Downloading a pirated film is a criminal offence

Recently, there was news about the leak of two cinema movies; ‘A Tribe Called Judah’ and ‘Malaika’ with people illegally downloading and watching the films which were produced with millions of naira almost free at the detriment of the cinema screening and robbing the producers the opportunity to make profit.

Following the leak and complaints to security officials, some culprits were arrested. Their arrest, however, led to some asking if they had done anything wrong while also raising some legal issues.

The rights of a movie maker like other intellectual property (IP) right, are protected by copyright, which is the legal right of the owner of IP to use their creation to the exclusion of every other person, except where the owner gives authorisation to another to use or reproduce the work. And this is supported by the Copyright Act 2023

Section 6 of the Copyright Act gives the owner of intellectual property the exclusive right to reproduce the work in any form, publish the work, perform the work in public, produce, reproduce, perform or publish any translation of the work, make any cinematograph film or a record in respect of the work, distribute the copy to the public for commercial purposes by way of rental, lease, hire, loan or similar arrangement, broadcast or communicate the work to the public by a loudspeaker or any other similar device and make any adaptation of the work;

Consequently, any individual that does any of the acts listed above without the owner’s authorisation has infringed the owner’s copyright in the face of the law.

In the case of the two films that leaked, infringement includes illegal possession of the movie by website owners to be downloaded and illegally sharing and offering for sale on WhatsApp or Telegram groups. It is worth noting that those who illegally access and download it are also breaking the law.

While proving copyright infringement is harder now than in the past when films were produced on physical cassettes or Compact discs, it can still be proved.

Protecting one’s intellectual property is not a straightforward process, and indeed can be very cumbersome (and expensive), but it definitely is worth it when you consider the vast sums of money that go into making movies.

In fact, fighting copyright infringement is such an important part of the movie making ecosystem that there are companies and consultancies that have been set up specifically to help movie producers.  However, asserting your right to intellectual property begins with taking action

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