Ghanaian musician and songwriter, Enoch Nana Yaw Oduro-Agyei, alias Trigmatic, has added his voice to growing calls for the intellectual property rights of creatives to be respected.
In a post shared on Twitter, Trigmatic lamented how creatives have serially had their intellectual property rights trampled upon.
He said it will only take prosecution of persons who disregard such rights to ensure that the narrative changes.
The artiste wants the exploitation of creatives to cease and due compensation paid appropriately.
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“Regardless of what the real story is, I expect to see creatives stand behind @KiraniAYAT as this could be a good case study for many others in time past and the future. IP and it’s issues are often taken for granted this side and until people are prosecuted for such offences.
“Our crafts will continually be taken for granted. It’s one person today and could be you tomorrow. Stop exploiting talents and do the needful,” Trigmatic tweeted on September 29.
It will be recalled that Kirani Ayat called out the Ghana Tourism Authority, GTA, for using part of his video in a promotional video which was shared on the Twitter handle of President Akufo-Addo.
The GTA in response said it legitimately acquired it from an agency, later named as Samsal.
However in a sharp turn of events, Samsal denied authorizing the Authority to use the video (a mood board) which featured parts of Kirani Ayat’s video.
In a September 28, 2022 statement, the agency explained that it entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with GTA to promote Digital Wrist Band – a wrist band that granted access to highly sought after events slated for the Christmas season – to tourists and foreigners.
Per the MoU, the agency said GTA was to give it the needed support in terms of finances and logistics in order to produce video content to market Ghana to the world in that regard.
Consequently, Samsal said it put together a video reel (mood board) for the GTA that included parts of Ayat’s ‘GUDA’ video to demonstrate the vision it had for videos it intended to subsequently create for the campaign.
