The punchline here really writes itself if you’ve ever seen how large the average American metal industry flack is (I’ll include myself). Anyway, a collection of music industry groups battling piracy in Nigeria is hoping to attract the attention of the country’s president with some dramatic gestures. They are hoping to partner with broadcasters for a “no music day” (again, if only we could do that with most US radio stations!) and also calling for a “mass hunger strike”.
While most of us know Nigeria has its fair share of problems with poverty, political instability and corruption, apparently they’re just like us – their music industry also wants everyone to feel bad for them:
Even if you take her comments with the usual pinch of salt, last year US Department of Commerce Representative Karen Burress painted a fairly bleak picture of the [copyright infringement] situation. She claimed that Nigeria was the largest market in Africa for infringing goods, with around 80% of the available international music CDs in the country and around 40% of local music sold as pirate copies.
The coalition claims that after several weeks of talks preceded by a lack of meaningful help from the government, they have no choice but to take drastic action.
“We are, therefore, forced to request Mr. President to declare a state of emergency with respect to the fight against the scourge of piracy and muster the necessary resources to eradicate this monster,” they said.
They should enlist Dino Cazares for the cause – that guy’s been training his entire life for a hunger strike.
