“Piracy affects the entire film & television production chain, from executive producers to directors, writers, cast and crew – the perception that it’s okay to pirate content because big broadcasters have plenty of money is a complete misnomer,” said Thandi Ramathesele, MD at izwimultimedia, speaking during a piracy panel discussion at MIP Africa 2024.
“Stealing content – effectively what piracy is – affects our culture, our society and mutes our voices. It’s not about taking money from big broadcasters – it takes food out of the mouths of our creatives – how many of our artists die without a cent to their name?”
The panel, moderated by MultiChoice Group Channel Director: Premium Channels Waldimar Pelser, also offered insights from Chola Makgamathe, Chairperson of the Copyright Coalition of South Africa and Tobias Maja, Senior Anti-Piracy Manager at Irdeto.
Getting Serious
Makgamathe agrees that piracy has a wide-ranging effect on entire creative industries because there’s still a perception that ‘being creative’ isn’t a ‘serious job’ like law or medicine. “The most recent figures I can access show that the cultural creative industries across various sectors in South Africa contribute at least 3% of South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – R161 billion, which is equivalent to what the agriculture industry contributes,” she explained. “For the creative industry, there’s also a lack of understanding about how people can protect their livelihoods. We need more education around how people can own the rights to their work, how they can monetise it, what rights they have and which laws protect them.”
Irdeto’s Maja says that content piracy across our continent is rife, largely because of outdated laws that aren’t fit to protect content in the digital age. “Outdated law makes it hard to prosecute people for piracy – and if they are prosecuted, the fine amounts to a slap on the wrist,” he says. “In many jurisdictions, law enforcement and even the judiciary don’t fully grasp that piracy is a criminal industry both making huge profits for itself and destroying the industries which help creatives pay the bills”.
He says that many digital piracy sites are set up as legitimate operations, for which customers pay a low subscription fee in order to access the content they want to see and believe they are accessing content legally. “There’s no down-side for the pirates because they don’t pay to illegally acquire the shows and films they then put up on servers and sell subscriptions to. Producers and content owners never see any of that money”.
Love Content? Pay for it
“On one hand, it’s heartwarming to know that your content is being appreciated by viewers on the other side of the world, if there’s no benefit to the people who created it, there’s no industry – and no more content to come,” says Ramathesele. “We need more education for artists and creatives about how to protect themselves and their rights – and advocacy to raise awareness in society about piracy. We love that viewers love our content and that’s why we make it – but having content stolen from us creates unemployment, impacts youth development and destroys the value chain. People will start to notice that the content they consume to relax or be entertained, isn’t there anymore – and it’ll be too late. We need a massive education drive – a collaboration between the production industry, broadcasters, the legal fraternity, business, advertisers and marketing entities, because without broadcasting platforms and without audiences, there’s no revenue”.
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