Twelve Optical Discs Replicating Plants registered by the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) have up to December 31st 2008 to operate in Nigerian line with the Copyright Optical Discs Plants Regulation 2006.

Director-General of NCC, Adebambo Adewopo, who stated this in Abuja said only replicating plants who have duly renewed their licences with effect from January 2009 could continue to operate in line with the Regulation and the Copyright Law.

The Director-General listed the registered plants as Nira Audiovisual Ltd, Transerve Disc Technologies Ltd, Alfa Magnetics Industries Ltd, Skymedia Production Nig. Ltd., Ecomax Media Technologies Nig. Ltd. Others are CVL Technologies Nig. Ltd., Compact Disc Technologies Nig. Ltd., Super Audio Industries Nig Ltd., Media Pro & Global Services Ltd., Hoperising Industries Ltd., and Nasima Universal Studio Ltd.

However, the registration of two other replicating plants, namely Akina Music International Nigeria Ltd and Digital Media Ltd has been kept in view, due to the failure of Akina to notify the Commission of and pay for two new lines of production while the registration of Digital Media Ltd has been held up by its internal management problem.

The Director-General who spoke in Abuja stressed that the registered optical disc plants required renewal of their registration with the Commission to enable them operate legally with effect from January next year since their current registration under the Optical Discs Regulation would lapse at the end of the out- going year. Applications for renewal of licence filed by some of the plants are at different points of processing and consideration.

According to him, a post-registration compliance check conducted on the plants by Copyright Inspectors in Lagos from December 2 to 4, 2008, showed that the plants were at various stages of compliance with the requirements of the Optical Discs Regulation for observance of best practices for operation and the need for renewal of registration.

"The essence of the exercise was to verify the extent to which registered plants have complied with the requirements of the regulations in terms of keeping of necessary records and application of the prescribed codes (PIN); and to enable the Commission maintain appropriate regulatory control and oversight on the plants to guard against a possible relapse to pre-regulation standards of operation.

"The exercise also provided an opportunity for the inspection team to examine the operations of the plants with a view to determining the existence of any infractions which may require a follow-up action," the NCC boss stated.

Adewopo stated that the compliance inspection conducted by the Commission"s inspectors involved the examination of the plants" records of operation in terms of machinery, raw materials sourcing and usage, production patterns and the compliance index in terms of meeting the regulatory requirement for use of the prescribed PIN and SID codes designed to curtail the likelihood of piracy of copyright protected works like CDs, VCD and DVDs at the production level.

The Director-General underscored the need for plants to demand for presentation of copyright notification certificate with censorship and release certificate as part of the copyright clearance procedure for issuing job orders for replication of protected works.

He indicated that compliance checks on replicating plans would now be done on a regular basis, adding that the reports of such checks would come in consideration for renewal or non-renewal of the registration of the plants and the possible need for full enforcement actions.