The bill seeks to repeal the Copyright Act Cap C28 2004 and re-enact the Copyright Act 2021 for a holistic review of the policy and legal framework for copyright protection in Nigeria and in particular include among other things provisions to:
- Make the law more friendly, for example use of the term audiovisual works which accommodates today’s technology, more than the term cinematograph films.
- Offer a dispute resolution mechanism.
- Align Nigeria’s copyright law to what is suitable for Nigeria in line with the World Trade Organisation TRIPS Agreement (TRIPS: Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).
- Increase the penalties for copyright infringement.
- Create new offenses: aiding, abetting and attempting copyright offences will become, punishable.
- Make online/digital reproduction an infringement (It amends the present definition of COPY which currently means MATERIAL COPY and does not accommodate transient or non-permanent copy which is what obtains online).
- Expand the bundle of rights copyright holders (for instance, copyright owners will have the exclusive right to make a work available online).
- Make dealing in equipment that circumvent “anti-copying technology” an offence.
- Expand customs notice prohibition against the importation of infringing copies of literary, dramatic and musical works to infringing copies of all other works.
- Prohibit exporting of infringing works.
- Enable internet and telecommunication service providers (ISPs) to remove or disable access to infringing content or links to for ISPs to have rights to deal with recalcitrant offenders on their sites and platforms.
