Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma) collected K2, 778,169,541.00 in the licensing year of April 2022 to March 2023 surpassing the budget of K2, 733,412,903 by K44, 756,638.00, the chairperson’s report for the year 2022/2023 indicates.
The report presented during the copyright body’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) held at Comesa Hall in Blantyre on Tuesday and Wednesday says that the amount was collected from different licensing sectors such as public performance, mechanical including soft copy, ringtones, reprography, broadcasting as well as administration of a levy on storage devices.
Apart from licensing, the report also says that the society was also involved in enforcement of the Copyright law including the fight against piracy.
The report has also indicated that Cosoma distributed over K938 million from various distribution streams including public performance, ringtones and the blank media levy in the period under review.
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The distributions according to the report, were for different periods starting from July 2018 to December 2021.
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Cosoma Chairperson Maureen Masamba said that the protection and benefits provided by the Copyright Act, 2016 through the society continues to encourage creativity in the country.
“The board has so far been meeting consistently to monitor activities of the society and to offer policy guidance to the secretariat in order to ensure speedy implementation of some activities which remained outstanding for a long time and all this is for the benefit of the creative sector,” Masamba said.
Meanwhile, Cosoma under its Copyright Fund has called on creatives to utilise the fund whose objective is to among others, develop capacity, quality and diversity of the copyright industry.
The operationalisation of the fund according to the copyright body’s Copyright Fund Manager Blessings Botha, is in line with pillar number three enabler five of the Malawi National Transformation Agenda 2063.
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“The Malawi 2063 has recognised the creative industries as a sector with a lot of potential that can transform the economy as a product for tourism and through job creation, income generation and foreign exchange earnings,” Botha said.
He said during the first cohort they disbursed close to K75 million and that the figure will improve to K100 million in the second cohort.
“What we want is for creatives to apply more and benefit from this fund. So far we can say that many artists are not forthcoming. We call upon them to apply whenever we make calls because this fund is for their own good,” Botha said.
