[kictanet] Music Piracy in Kenya - Government can Help

[Bernard Kioko [Bernsoft Interactive Limited]]

James,

As I said copyright can be complicated and it's taken me two years and 2
trips to South Africa to understand this fully.

My point was, ALL copyright owners of a song MUST authorize the song to be
sold. If only 2 persons out of 4 owners  allow the song to be sold, then
copyright infringement takes place for the other 2 persons. Of course this
changes if the 4 persons had appointed the 2 persons to represent them.

Please remember my complain, there is a website that is offering our content
FREE and although we have channels to sell our content consumers go for
FREE. Example,  at one point, this website and all other "legal" website
existed on the a network operator's wap home page.

On your issue about hottest downloads.

The hottest downloads are in a website where content is being pirated. If
music is to be offered for free, let the OWNERS of the music do the free
offers.

Regards

-----Original Message-----
From: James Kariuki [mailto:jkariuki at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 11:50 AM
To: Bernard Kioko [Bernsoft Interactive Limited]
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Music Piracy in Kenya - Government can Help

> Not every Kenyan can play music from other forms. Some people still 
> have Cassettes and CD players. The issue of how music is sold to you 
> is secondary AFTER its copyright has been managed. Lets not confuse 
> the issue of copyright infringement with that of access to music.

Today am having a long and slow day - forgive me if am missing something.
You raise this issue here first because the music is 'pirated' and sold not
as recorded/burnt CDs but as downloads off a website. You also say that
those accessing the music from some of the hosting sites are doing so
illegally because there is copyright infringement. If there no access issue,
copyright infringement would not arise in the first place. My question to
you is: how have you placed yourself in the music industry to cater for a
growing need of electronic access (through downloads) of your music? I ask
this because the lack of a legal access to the music could have created an
avenue for others to profit illegally.

>
> Licensing limited number of duplicates just means an artist can tell 
> the person making CDs to make 100,000 for now and when they need to 
> make more, they contact the artist. On the internet though, downloads 
> can move from 1 to 1m in day....

If this is your view. But I think this is a 20th century way of managing
copyright and restricting access.

On a different note, have you tried through your sources to establish if the
hottest downloads are also the fastest moving sales? I remember reading
something a while back to the effect that availing your music freely for
download could bolster your sales.

--James