Tribune / Presse
Article paru dans
N° 479 - 15/03/2005

VICTIMS OF PIRACY

Mali K7 and Seydoni closed

Mali K7 and seydoni will lay off their employees from tomorrow on. Here is the cruel revelation that a source close to the two companies made to us yesterday. Exhausted by piracy, the two companies decided to stop temporarily their activities of production and duplication until energetic measures are taken by the government against the plague.
On the level of the two directions, it’s total silence. Nobody desired to comment on this decision taken by the two directions with mutual agreement. By the side of Mali K7, we learned that a press conference will be organized tomorrow. It will be animated by the persons in charge of Seydoni and Mali K7 in the course of the studio Bogolan (in front of Mali K7 in quinzambougou).

Just last week, the persons in charge for Mali K7 told us that they were in situation of suspension of payment "the receipts do not face the administrative expenditures any more all the more to pay the employees. We run to bankruptcy if nothing is done in a vigorous way against piracy ".

The victims of this plague are numerous. First are the artists. Thus, in an interview published yesterday in the daily newspaper “les Echos”, the young talent Djénéba Diakité known as Djéni recalled that, in Mali, "the artist cannot live of his work". She added, "In Mali, when an artist releases a successful album, he shares the receipts with the pirates. I regularly see pirated copies of my album on the market. But, I cannot do anything … We count a lot on the music lovers to help us to overcome piracy. It is necessary to know that the only manner to help an artist is to pay his legal tapes".

It should be recalled that the plague costs about twenty billion of FCFA to the Treasury per annum. Despite the personal will of the Minister of culture to protect the artists and their works, the width of piracy is growing. According to certain estimates, 95 % of the musical products sold in Mali are pirated. Today, Seydoni and Mali K7 decided to take, together the bull by the horns in order to push the government to act against this organized robbery. A crime which condemns the artists to misery and industries to bankruptcy.