Cosbots Mending Fences, With Users Of Copyrighted Works In Music
Correspondent | Monday June 25, 2018 18:00
The meetings were held at Botswana Craft while some were held at COSBOTS premises.
With the theme for the meetings as: Mending Fences: Building relations with users of copyrighted works in music, it goes without saying that COSBOTS stakeholders are important to us. The objectives of these meeting were to improve stakeholder relations; to sensitise stakeholders on licensing processes and procedures and to get customer feedback and recovery.
We are pleased to make time to communicate and sell our services, setting again the grounds for our operations, educating on copyright, explain benefits of COSBOTS to members and users and generally how we as partners can publicly support and develop efforts to benefit Batswana. This will help to grow our client base through membership and also financially. Our organisational culture is to be customer service focused based on implementation of policies and procedures.
Users of copyright protected works such as promoters and DJ’s, representatives from institutions etc attended these stakeholder meetings with the aim to build relations s. Those who did not make it also made efforts to reschedule the meetings as they were held up with other activities needing their attention.
During these meetings stakeholders were given the platform to voice out their concerns and among them was a request for a review of the COSBOTS tariffs and usage of flat fee tariff instead of the 7.5% of revenue for events. Attendees urged COSBOTS to, in the future also invite relevant stakeholders such as Ministry of Youth Sports and Culture, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Botswana Unified Revenue Services, Council and Companies Intellectual Property Authority as policy makers to come hear out and understand their struggles in the music industry. They also advised COSBOTS to employ a Fair Use Policy to take into consideration usage of music at album launches, charity events, churches and school events especially used for educational purposes.
As COSBOTS we believe that our external and primary stakeholders’ feedback will help us build a better relationship with them as we appreciate, engage them on meetings, workshops and avail information to them. We are then going to be able to execute measurable objectives and achieve high performance standards per departments. Our strategy correlates with all our processes and promote our services in many forms.
Coordination between our departments,’ outlined performance targets and understanding of the music industry can benefit the copyright holders and users more in the music industry[3].
Then their works can benefit both users and creators economically, socially and culturally in development sectors that can provide investment and job opportunities for Batswana.[4] We shall continue to carry many more engagement meetings with stakeholders to help enhance our services and achieve performance targets developed to commit to continued growth with increased support for local artists. COSBOTS appreciates your concepts that can inform and transform our services.
The users of Copyright works should note that COSBOTS manages and ministers the collection of royalties from users and distribution of royalties to the copyright owners as mandated by the Copyright and Neighbouring Act.
Therefore this mandate will not be achieved if stakeholders do not have a reciprocal understanding with COSBOTS. COSBOTS also adheres to protecting the moral rights of owners’ works as well as keeping the brand beneficial to the artists of this country. However, users should be ready at any time to see COSBOTS licensing officers by their door steps’ coming to collect what belongs to the copyright owners and we thank users for their cooperation in advance.
COSBOTS would like to acknowledge all stakeholders who have shown their loyalty in complying with us and decency for the stakeholders who attended the stakeholder engagement meetings.[5]
Tel: (+267) 3928055
Website: www.cosbots.co.bw
Email: info@cosbots.co.bw
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