The annual Vodafone Ghana Music Awards took place last night with Stonebwoy winning the top Artiste of the Year Award. The event which was hosted by actress-Joselyn Dumas and Nathaniel Attoh dragged on for over 6 hours—and it was badly produced. If you want to know what went down, CLICK HERE for our review + … Read more
First of all, let me mention that I am not much of a Sarkodie fan but I acknowledge and appreciate his hard work, dedication—and his ability to have succeeded in an ‘industry’ fully soaked in weakness.
When it comes to Charter House, I really don’t like big companies or corporations, because they always screw the small guy up—and over the years, I’ve said the lack of competition and the ‘monopolistic’ status of Charter House is somewhat turning them into an industry demi-god. Going against their flowing current means you should expect to be shunned, banned or marginalised—and that is the definition of TYRANNY.
Now that I have made it clear that I do not necessarily admire Charter House or Sarkodie though I respect their success, let’s dispassionately consider the substantive issue which many have missed in their discussion over the recent Sarkodie-Charter House brouhaha…
It all started when Sarkodie took to social media to rant over the violation of his personality right—using his name or image for a commercial purpose without his consent or agreed compensation. This is both a statutory and common law violation, which means, Charter House did not just erred when they did that to Sarkodie (irrespective of their compelling reasons), they also broke the law…
Sarkodie had every right, be it moral or legal to be upset of this considering how hard he has worked without any industry support to obtain his current musical status. His fans see him as some sort of Hiplife god and to be frank, he is—more like Ghana’s version of Kanye West.
For this, insults, rants and blows went the way of Charter House from the fans and even some established Ghanaian artistes. Legally, I supported Sarkodie for the simple fact that, Ghanaians continue to take the piss out of people’s intellectual property rights and personality rights on every scale.
Yesterday, Charter House-organisers of the annual Ghana Music Awards were compelled by Ghanaian musician-Sarkodie, his fans and the many Ghanaian bloggers who jumped on the issue of the company’s usage of the artiste’s name as a performing act in this year’s Ghana Music Awards without his consent or any contract.
It’s interesting how this is playing out on twitter—if it was in the United States or United Kingdom, the artiste would be in court, seeking for the appropriate damages. If a big event company such as Charter House does not really give a hoot about what the law says at any point in time, what do you expect the smaller event organisers to do—and more also, are they not the same organisation in court seeking to have the law in action in relation to the Shatta Wale’s defamation case?
That is the sort of irony grounded in the way Charter House seems to be operating.
There is law to enforce when someone violates one in relation to them but they seem to continue to violate the same law (in other form) when dealing with others.
All around the world, the law is pretty simple on this; “a person shall not use any aspect of an individual’s persona for a commercial purpose…The person’s persona could include his or her name, voice, signature, photograph, image, likeness, or distinctive appearance, if any of these aspects have commercial value”.
In their apology press release, Charter House said;
“We would like to expressly state that Sarkodie IS NOT performing at the 16TH VODAFONE GHANA MUSIC AWARDS. Prior to this, we had been communicating and had met with a member of his management team trying to arrive at a favourable figure.
In anticipation of that figure coupled with the unstable power situation in the country plus the long Easter weekend ahead of us, where it would be almost impossible to get a studio to record, we worked ahead and recorded different versions of the 16th VGMA’s final event radio commercial.
One with Sarkodie’s name and another without. With our fingers crossed, the ads were all submitted to our media manager. Unfortunately, we were unable to come to a favourable agreement and parted ways amicably.
Our media manager was immediately informed on Thursday evening to send out only the ad that DID NOT HAVE Sarkodie’s name. This, she did except for YFM, where she sent the wrong ad which had Sarkodie’s name.
Clearly, it was an error from our end which we have totally admitted. We hereby unreservedly apologise to Sarkodie, his management friends and fans as well”
You can see from the part I have ‘bolded’ that Charter House seem to suggest that they honestly erred with the audio commercial by sending out a wrong one, and not that they had a clear intention to infringe on Sarkodie’s personality right, but from the billboard above—their explanation falls flat on its face.
Looking at the billboard, it shows images of Sarkodie and Samini performing and as such, there should not be arguments such as the two having been used on the billboard as nominees for the awards publicity—the obvious inference or message the billboard sends is that; the two will be performing at the Ghana Music Awards 2015.
