E-Business
Commission Vows to Prosecute Online Service Providers for Copyright Infractions
Online service providers, including hosts of e-libraries, would be held responsible for any copyright infractions on their platforms, according to John O. Asein, director-general, Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC)
Asein, who spoke during deliberations with the newly elected executive of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) on a courtesy call at the Commission’s Head Office in Abuja, disclosed that the Commission was paying more attention to online activities with a view to curbing the sale of pirated books through online stores.
Addressing a seven-man delegation led by Camillus Ukah, new ANA president, accompanied by its immediate past President, Denja Abdullahi, Asein called on ANA to constitute an anti-piracy committee to interface with the Commission for proactive, sustained and effective anti-piracy campaign.
He decried contract gaps between authors and publishers in the country and indicated that the Commission would collaborate with ANA to develop model contracts to ensure proper rights clearance and adequate remuneration for authors in the book industry.
Noting that the absence of proper contractual agreements between authors and publishers has left many authors with unpleasant experiences, the Director-General also observed the necessity for new business models to ensure adequate recompense for authors, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stressing the importance of the literary field, Asein noted that creative writing was the bedrock of the wider creative industry, including Nollywood.
In his words: “The movie industry could not have been where it is today without the literary talents turning out excellent film scripts.
“The author of the film script is often unsung, but they set the tone for good films and, like the faces of Nollywood, these scriptwriters also deserve to be celebrated.”
The Director-General gave special commendation to the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, for recently demonstrating his unalloyed commitment to copyright values and lending his voice to denounce copyright infringement and abuses.
Asein said the Commission would be pleased to adopt the Nobel Laurette as a Copyright Champion to help fight book piracy in the country.
He called on other notable authors to also step up support for the campaign against copyright piracy.
The Director-General urged ANA members to take advantage of the Commission’s copyright e-registration system and avail themselves of the whistleblowing policy of the NCC by alerting the Commission on suspected pirates for effective enforcement.
He said: “We should not allow rogues to take over the copyright space.
“ANA should intensify its copyright enlightenment campaign and encourage its members to sound an alarm wherever they find pirates at work.
“The Commission, on its part, pledges to always respond promptly to any alarm.”
While calling on the new executive to upscale the association’s reading campaign, the Director-General urged ANA to support the efforts of the Nigeria Association of the Blind to make more books available in accessible formats for the benefit of blind and visually impaired persons.
Asein further thanked ANA for helping to sustain the Reproduction Rights Society of Nigeria and expressed hope that REPRONIG would be assisted further to become a viable collective management organisation for the benefit of Nigerian authors.
“When CMOs are threatened with extinction, we owe them a lifeline to keep afloat,” he said.
Asein commended the enviable legacy of visionary leadership in ANA, adding that the Association has demonstrated quality leadership, worthy of emulation in the creative industry.
Ukah stated that the Association was committed to reforms and strengthening of the copyright regime to address gaps in a bid to promote the economic interests of authors and advance the literary industry.
He expressed appreciation for the Commission’s proactive measures towards checking piracy, citing its recent timely intervention to curb the online piracy of books belonging to the literary icon, Prof. Wole Soyinka.
Ukah lauded the Commission’s long-standing cooperation that the Association has enjoyed, particularly during the reform of the copyright system and assured of its continued collaboration with NCC.
The ANA President further assured the Commission that the new executive would work closely with the NCC to promote copyright knowledge among authors and ensure that literary authors continued to use the copyright system optimally.
Representatives of the Commission and ANA were constituted into a working group to identify areas of immediate interest and facilitate collaboration.
Other newly elected ANA executives in attendance were Farida Mohammed, Vice President; Mark Ortserga, General Secretary; Freeman Okosun, Assistant General Secretary; Torlafia Benjamin Terhile, Legal Adviser; and Umar Yogizaj, Publicity Secretary, North.
E-Business
Cyber Resilience a Critical Priority for Manufacturing Amid Rapid Digitalization – Report Shows
As 60% of manufacturers race toward full digitalisation, cyber risk is increasingly manifesting as a business risk, according to a new global report by Kaspersky and VDC Strategy.
This means cybersecurity is not merely a compliance function, it is a cornerstone of production assurance, safeguarding uptime, quality, and operational continuity.
Manufacturers are modernising to deliver safer, more consistent and more cost-effective production and digitalization is moving fast: just 9% of organisations describe themselves as fully digital today, but 60% expect to get there within two years, according to the joint report by Kaspersky and VDC, titled ‘Cyber Resilience, Built for Manufacturing’.
That shift links shop-floor equipment, production lines and site operations to platforms such as Manufacturing execution systems (MES), Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and historians, turning many plants into cyber-physical systems (CPS), where a digital disruption doesn’t stay digital. It can slow production lines, quarantine work in progress, invalidate traceability records, or halt production outright.
What’s driving manufacturing digitalization?
Manufacturers are digitising for measurable operational gains, not novelty. Survey respondents identified the primary drivers of their digital transformation strategy as:
- Improving production output or efficiency (24%)
- Reducing operational or production expenses (15%)
- Enabling new strategic opportunities (14%)
- Improving cyber resilience (13%)
The same connected systems that unlock these gains, including MES, IIoT sensors, automated material handling, remote engineering access, also become the systems that determine whether production can be trusted to keep running.
Cyber risk is now a business risk
Cyber risk has evolved from a mere IT concern to a direct threat to revenue generation, as environments transform into cyber-physical systems. In these integrated settings, digital disruptions like malware no longer just affect data, they can cause unsafe operations, scrapped batches, and halted production on the plant floor. This shift highlights the urgent need to treat cybersecurity as a key part of operational resilience.
According to the report, nearly 60% of manufacturing organisations estimate that cyber incidents cause damages exceeding $1 million per event, with an average disruption of 15.3 hours. The most significant losses often result from production halts, missed delivery commitments, and penalties, rather than just forensic costs.
In this context, downtime links cybersecurity risks to overall business performance. Cyber incidents can reduce Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), strain staffing, and disrupt supply chains. Recovery involves more than system restore, it requires re-establishing confidence in process parameters, quality records, and traceability before resuming operations.
Mature cybersecurity programs now incorporate OT security into governance, focusing on metrics valued by production leaders such as time to restore, backup confidence, legacy asset coverage, and safe degraded operation. This alignment ensures cybersecurity supports continuous production and resilience, not just IT compliance.
However, challenges remain due to split ownership. While 59% of organisations’ IT departments manage security policies, these often overlook plant realities. Managing many security tools (44%) and OT patching issues (38%) show that cybersecurity must be embedded into daily routines of production, engineering, and quality teams. Only through such integration can cybersecurity effectively enhance operational reliability and defend against evolving threats.
“As manufacturing environments become increasingly interconnected, cybersecurity shifts focus from merely adding protective layers to ensuring the availability, resilience, and integrity of production processes. The goal is to minimise operational impact and speed up recovery, rather than solely preventing intrusions.
“Kaspersky offers a unified ecosystem that integrates IT, OT, and IIoT security, empowering manufacturers to pursue digital transformation securely. This strategy helps maintain operational continuity and reduces long-term cybersecurity costs,” comments Andrey Strelkov, Head of Industrial Cybersecurity Product Line at Kaspersky.
To implement this strategy, manufacturing companies can leverage solutions from the Kaspersky OT Cybersecurity Ecosystem, centered around Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity (KICS), a native Extended Detection and Response platform designed for critical infrastructure protection. KICS enables centralised detection and response to complex attacks across the entire industrial network, ensuring comprehensive visibility and security.
Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has commenced a forensic investigation into the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Lotus Bank and Hackerbella Ltd over alleged violations of data protection laws involving students’ personal information.
The investigation follows public complaints alleging that students’ personal data were used to open bank accounts without a lawful basis.
Dr Vincent Olatunji, national commissioner and chief executive officer of the NDPC, directed the investigation team to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the circumstances surrounding the collection, processing, use and disclosure of the affected students’ personal data.
The investigation will also determine the respective roles and responsibilities of UNILAG, Lotus Bank and Hackerbella in the alleged processing of the data.
According to the Commission, the investigation will assess the data protection compliance obligations of the parties under the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023 (NDP Act), as well as potential risks posed to the rights and freedoms of the affected data subjects.
The NDPC said the probe would cover several areas, including Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), the lawfulness and transparency of credit scoring or profiling activities, and the use of automated decision-making systems.
It will also examine the adequacy of privacy notices, data-sharing arrangements, lawful bases for processing, data minimisation and purpose limitation.
Other areas include data retention policies and the adequacy of technical and organisational measures put in place to safeguard the rights and personal data of affected students.
The Commission reiterated that institutions entrusted with the personal data of students, staff and other members of their communities have a heightened responsibility to ensure that such information is processed lawfully, fairly, transparently and securely.
The NDPC therefore warned educational institutions that are yet to comply with its existing data protection compliance directives to take immediate steps to achieve compliance.
The Commission said it would continue to exercise its regulatory mandate to protect the privacy rights of Nigerians and ensure that organisations processing personal data comply with the provisions of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023.
Microsoft is planning to unveil its new Maia 300 AI chip this fall, potentially as soon as next month, The Information reported on Monday, citing people with direct knowledge of the plans.
The company introduced its Maia AI chip in November 2023 but has lagged rivals such as Alphabet and Amazon in scaling up its in-house chip efforts as it seeks to reduce its reliance on Nvidia’s costly processors.
Google began recognizing revenue from direct sales of its custom AI chips, called Tensor Processing Units, in the quarter ended June, while Amazon has also seen growing adoption of its processors, including its Trainium chips.
Microsoft has been in talks with chipmaker TSMC to secure manufacturing capacity for more than 300,000 units of the chip for delivery in 2027, according to the report. It is also looking to significantly ramp up production and persuade major cloud customers such as Anthropic to adopt the chip.
Microsoft ultimately aims to secure capacity for more than 1 million Maia 300 chips, though component supplies and ongoing capacity negotiations with TSMC could constrain its plans, according to the report.
It unveiled its second-generation Maia 200 in January, built by TSMC using 3-nanometer technology.
Microsoft packed the chip with a significant amount of SRAM, a type of memory that can provide speed advantages for AI systems handling large numbers of user requests.
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