THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR EFFECTIVE DIGITAL COPYRIGHT PROTECTION IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Digital Technology brought about digital copyright and has had and is still having awesome effects on the way digital copyright goods are invented and disseminated across the globe. Aside its good effects, digital technology has posed grave challenges to digital copyright protection globally, Nigeria inclusive. Amazingly, the Nigerian copyright law has only lately recognized it and its vital place in today’s digital economy. Applying the doctrinal research method in the analysis, it is discovered that the daily staggering strides of digital technology and the internet and associated ills like inadequate laws, counterfeiting and piracy, borderless nature of the digital environment, unease of determining the authors, owners and copyrightability of computer generated works, multimedia, inadequate enforcement mechanisms, corruption, lack of consultations and debates etc have put the rights of the digital copyright owners in jeopardy. The remedies are found to lie in further upgrading the Nigerian Copyright Act, adopting technical, administrative, social and judicial solutions, and creation of Collective Management Organization (CMO) of digital copyright Owners. Thus, the Nigerian National Assembly should take pragmatic steps to further upgrade the Act to bring it to full international standard in all sphere and make it more forward looking in order to remedy the deficiencies of digital copyright protection. Again, adoption and legal sanctioning of technical, administrative, social and judicial solutions and creation of CMO of digital copyright owners are recommended. These it is hoped, will proximately resolve the challenges to digital copyright in Nigeria and further uplift Nigeria’s position in the global economy.