Dawn Images

Pakistan’s entertainment fraternity has been vocal about not receiving royalties and we’ve seen them approach different political leaders to bring an end to the practice. They’ve protested time and again for royalties and progress is now being made as PTI Senator Faisal Javed took to Twitter to announce that he has put forward a royalties bill for the country’s artists.

On Monday, Javed tweeted, “After getting the resolution passed unanimously last year. Glad to announce that today it was indeed a pleasure tabling the much needed royalties bill especially for the poor creative people of our country. #RoyaltiesForArtists Hoping to get it passed soon Insha’ALLAH.”

In a followup tweet, the PTI leader wrote that artists have been facing the issue of “rightful and just royalties for a long time due to redundant and out-dated provisions of relevant laws.” He said that the amendment in the Copyright Ordinance 1962 aims at empowering copyright board to fix the royalties for licencing and assignment work.

Sang-e-Mah actor Omair Rana retweeted Javed’s tweet and said that this single “honourable fight” can bring honour to all artists of Pakistan and single-handedly launch not just the culture driven industry but also “start ups and innovators and enterprises of all kinds.”

Javed shared the same tweets as a post on Instagram that was appreciated by actor Mikaal Zulfiqar who shared it to his Instagram stories and added an applause emoji.

Last year, Javed told Images that he started working on the bill in April 2021 but had to wait in order to compile the feedback from the artist community and their lawyers. “Actors are given royalties worldwide. If we don’t change the working environment of our artists or change the way they live, then we will have killed creativity ourselves,” he had said.

In 2021, Senator Khan had shared the news about the bill being in the pipeline after artists had taken to social media to demand royalties. At the time he also acknowledged that “there is no policy or law ensuring that artists be given financial credit for their work.”

A few months, later on December 24, Senator Khan also shared the news of the resolution being submitted in the Senate. It resulted in many celebrities rejoicing over the news of royalties being considered for the whole industry.

Royalties are payments made to artists when a project that they have worked on gets a re-run or is reused in any way.