Rappers Cassper Nyovest and Riky Rick, and twin DJs Major League, are up in arms because channel Supersport 4 has begun using the catch phrase “slyza tsotsi” in promos for PSL soccer games…
Slyza Tsotsi is the name of the foursome’s hit song, which has been downloaded well over 300,000 times. It loosely means “run for it, thug”.
Cassper tweeted yesterday: “Supersport4 is using the slyza tsostsi slogan. Are we getting payed [sic]? Nope. Just like when Savanna used my s**t. Corporates never loved us.”
Major League tweeted: “#SlyzaTsotsi Slogan is on Supersport! Hawu? Where and who? No one has approached us for it.”
Riky Rick tweeted: “The crazy thing is that we know so many people up there.
“Sad that they don’t respect us. #SlyzaTsotsi.”
But do they have legitimate reasons to be upset?
Supersport spokesman Clinton van der Berg dismissed the hullabaloo, saying: “Slyza tsotsi has been part of tsotsi taal for a while.
“Had Supersport used the song, which we didn’t, Cassper would have been quite right to complain.
“The phrase, however, is a rich part of popular culture. As far as we are aware, Cassper owns no copyright to the slang itself.”
Herman Blignaut, a partner at intellectual property law firm Spoor & Fisher, said single words or slogans were generally not protected by copyright because they are “usually considered to be of insufficient substance to warrant copyright protection”.
He said that in this instance the phrase had not been registered as a trademark, and was probably too short and insubstantial for its use to constitute copyright infringement.
In May last year Cassper was irked by a Savanna Dark cider advert that used the tag line “Dark, dark Shebeleza” – a play on his smash hit, Doc Shebeleza
He reportedly wrote on Facebook then: “Didn’t get a cent from this campaign and it’s everywhere on social networks.
“Pretty f***ed up what these corporates can do to us small fish who work hard to accumulate popularity and relevance.
“I’m sho they will say they have nun to do with it even doe it came from they Twitter account so I ain’t even gonna budge with legal s*** but I was just saying. Le tlala la lona This is wack.”
Published via Bbizcommunity.com
