Techdirt. Stories filed under "kenya"

Kenyan Filmmaker Who's Planning To Distribute His Documentary Via 'Pirates' Posts First Hour Of New Film On Youtube

Tim Cushing — Mon, 7 Jan 2013 20:02:00 PST

A couple months back we covered the story of Patrick Mureithi, a Kenyan filmmaker who was raising money for a documentary on post-election violence in his home country. He was asking for $5,000 to cover travel expenses and some related costs and was hoping that Kenya's thriving "piracy industry" would handle the distribution end of the business, spreading his message of hope throughout his homeland.

The good news is Murethi's Indiegogo campaign met its goal and he is back in Kenya setting up viewings of his documentary and shooting more footage to add to it. It's still in its "first draft" stage according to Murethi, but he sent a message our way informing us that he's uploaded the first hour of the still-unfinished documentary to Youtube.

@techdirt Here's the film. Please share it widely: youtube.com/watch?v=Ze6tG5…Peace, p
— Patrick Mureithi (@MureithiPatrick) January 6, 2013

He's also blogging about his experiences returning to Kenya (he currently lives in Missouri), including this "fun" little shakedown at the hands of customs at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport:

Custom's dude @ the airport: Hello? What do you have in those bags?
Me: Some clothes and my camera equipment.
Dude: What are you doing with this equipment?
Me: I'm working on a documentary about healing from trauma after post-election violence.
Dude: Are you a press-man?
Me: No.
Dude: Where is your filming permit?
Me: I don't have one
Dude: Then we have to keep your equipment until you get a permit
Me: I find it hard to leave this equipment here after all the sacrifice it took to get it
Dude: Go talk to that lady (presumably his superior)

- - -

Lady: What are you using this equipment for?
(I explain what I did to dude)
Lady: But this happened five years ago!
Me: Yes, but the trauma has not gone away, and will not go away with time
Lady: How will it go away then?
Me: Through education about trauma and teaching various ways that we can heal
Lady: This is a very controversial film. You need a permit, and you need to leave your equipment with us until you get one.
Me: Please, madam, this is not agreeable with me
Lady: Go see that man in that office

- - -

Man in office: Where is your permit?
(The Dance repeats itself. 45 minutes in total)
Man: We'll let you go with your equipment, but you have to pay 1% of the equipment's cost, non-refundable

I pay, and scurry off to meet my father who has been patiently waiting, sipping coffee through a straw.

Karibu Kenya.

Apparently only non-controversial films are allowed to roam permit-free, unless you're willing to pay a non-refundable "deposit" on equipment you own. A bit of a rough start to be sure, but more recent posts seem a bit more upbeat.

Hopefully, Murethi will keep us posted on any new developments, including the implementation of his scofflaw distribution system once the film is completed.

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Kenyan Filmmaker Looking To Cuts Costs By Using 'Pirates' As His Distributors

Tim Cushing — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 07:35:53 PST

It's not often you'll see a filmmaker turn to pirates for help. Almost every American film takes great pains to inform paying viewers just how awful these people are and how much trouble they'll be in if they're ever caught. That's "our" culture, as delivered by the MPAA: the only good pirate is an arraigned pirate (or one that has a boat, died a couple hundred years ago and resides safely on the MPAA's side of the screen).

But that's the US. Other cultures have their own take. Notable Indian filmmaker Anurag Kashyap views piracy as just another way to get his message to the masses. Incredibly efficient pirates in Nigeria spread purloined films as far as they could reach, creating new markets for Nigerian filmmakers. China's film industry continues to thrive despite being held up constantly as an example of unchecked IP infringement.

Here's another filmmaker who recognizes what pirates can offer a filmmaker on a budget. Patrick Mureithi, a Kenyan filmmaker who currently lives in Springfield, Missouri, is hoping to show his documentary on post-election violence and rebuilding in his home country, and is raising travel funds via Indiegogo. Most of this $5,000 will go directly to travel expenses, as Mureithi is counting on some of his countrymen to handle the rest.

I need to raise at least $5,000 for airfare, meals and transportation. Airfare is $2,000, transportation and meals another $2,000, and $1,000 is for miscellaneous expenses. My hope is to show the film on national television, and also to distribute it at minimum cost via the DVD piracy industry. Anything extra that I raise will go towards venue and equipment rental so that I can host public awareness forums.

When money's tight, no one does better, cheaper distribution than those whose only "business" is cheap distribution. With this "industry" already well established in Kenya, Mureithi simply needs to get his finished film into their hands and let them do what they do best -- get his film into the hands of as many Kenyans as possible.

"Kenya: Until Hope is Found," tells the story of severely traumatized men and women who learn various ways of taking responsibility for their own healing. This is a message that will resonate in the hearts of many, and will help start conversations about the need to heal from trauma, without which there can be no lasting peace. This is a message that is relevant not just in Kenya but to EVERY human being on the planet.

Hopefully, Mureithi will get his film funded and spread throughout Kenya. Roger Ebert has tweeted his support, calling the filmmaker's project an "urgent documentary." With Kenya teetering on the edge of genocide (according to Genocide Watch), the upcoming 2013 election could prove to be the tipping point, one that Mureithi hopes to head off with widespread viewing of his film.

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DailyDirt: Nuclear Power Won't Go Away

Michael Ho — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:00:00 PDT

Someday, the world will run out of fossil fuels to burn. But maybe we can avoid running out of fossil fuels by figuring out another energy source, so we won't need to burn hydrocarbons to produce electricity. Nuclear fission is just one possible energy source that could potentially replace coal, oil and natural gas entirely -- but there are some obvious drawbacks such as long-term radioactivity from its waste and the possibility of creating more nuclear weapons. Nuclear technology keeps moving forward (whether or not we've figured out how to deal with WMDs), and here are just a few examples.

Separating uranium-235 from the uranium-238 is a difficult process, but if there were an easier way to do it, nuclear proliferation could be a much bigger problem. Cheaper nuclear energy might solve a bunch of the world's problems, but it could also create a few new ones, too. [url]
Kenya is looking to develop its own nuclear energy program at the the University of Nairobi. It's an ambitious goal, but Kenya wants to create a sustainable, reliable and affordable source of energy for its economy to become a middle-income country by 2030. [url]
The ability to turn enriched uranium into weapons isn't a one-way trip -- about 20,000 of Russia's nuclear missiles will be turned into nuclear fuel for US power plants by 2013. A 1993 agreement between Russia and the USA has been turning 500 metric tons of Soviet weapons-grade uranium into electricity for America's cities. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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Kenya's High Court Rules Anti-Counterfeiting Law Is Unconstitutional Because It Threatens Access To Generic Drugs

Glyn Moody — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:29:00 PDT

Back in 2009, Techdirt wrote about an interesting challenge to a then-new law against counterfeits in Kenya, on the grounds that it might be used to stop perfectly legal generic variants of drugs being imported into the country. That matters, because around 90% of drugs used in Kenya are generics, which means that blocking them would have serious implications for healthcare in that country.

Michael Geist points out that two and half years later, the court has finally delivered its verdict, and it's a great result:

Kenya's High court ruled on Friday that lawmakers must review legislation that could threaten the import of generic drugs, allowing Kenyans to continue accessing affordable medicine.

The judge specifically noted the problem mentioned above: "The act is vague and could undermine access to affordable generic medicines since the act had failed to clearly distinguish between counterfeit and generic medicines," Judge Mumbi Ngugi said in her ruling.
As a result, Kenyan lawmakers will have to amend the bill to distinguish clearly between counterfeit and generic drugs.

That's not only a huge win for the millions of Kenyans who depend upon generics for their treatment, but it also highlights a key problem for ACTA and TPP, which both seek to grant broad powers to border officials to seize medicines without distinguishing sufficiently between counterfeits and generics.

Here's what the international humanitarian aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has to say about ACTA and generics (pdf):

While it is claimed that ACTA will protect against falsified medicines by allowing countries and companies to take strong measures in trademark disputes, this may in fact impede access to genuine generic medicines.

Meanwhile, MSF comments on TPP as follows (pdf): the U.S. is requesting that TPP countries grant customs officials the ex officio right to detain shipments of medicines at the border, even in transit, if the goods are suspected of being counterfeits or if they are considered “confusingly similar” to trademarked goods.
Other countries need to follow Kenya's lead and confirm that access to vital generic medicines is a right that cannot be over-ridden by purely commercial considerations. Among other things, that means throwing out ACTA, and re-drafting TPP's dangerously vague sections dealing with counterfeit drugs.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

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Why Kenya's Attempt To Put Intellectual Property Rights In Its Constitution Is A Mistake

Amelia Andersdotter — Thu, 8 Jul 2010 22:26:37 PDT

We recently published a post about Kenya's decision to put intellectual property rights into its proposed constitution, noting that this probably wasn't great for Kenya or other countries (who have likely been pushing Kenya to include those features). Amelia Andersdotter (who is supposed to be a member of the European Parliament, but still technically hasn't been given her seat due to what can only be described as bureaucratic incompetence on a continental scale) has written up a guest post, giving her analysis of why Kenya's move makes little sense

A review of the Kenyan constitution has been undergoing for a long time, and only now has a final draft proposal for a new constitution been released. But, despite the stated aims of freedom, democracy, participation and the free exchange of ideas (pdf), the released draft seems far from that ideal: Kenya is taking the Euro-American route to heavier information restrictions, including more copyright, more patents and more private knowledge monopolies, instead of keeping their legal environment open to creativity, participation and sharing.

From the perspective of someone working with information policies in the European Union, I can only see this harming Kenyan interests. While many sub-Saharan African countries still have relative freedom with regards to information sharing, this is being diminished by pressure from external groups. Most prominently, American and European corporations. Moving the Kenyan legislation towards the European will shift power from Kenyan entrepreneurs to European big business. Ownership concentration is one of the most harmful tendencies we have seen with intellectual property rights in Europe.

What is more, I worry that this will damage my home turf. The complexity of international trade has made it almost impossible for any single country to pass any law into effect without it affecting other nations, and as long as nations around the world keep changing their laws to accommodate for restrictive innovation and creativity policies, we will find it difficult to see new art, communication and new businesses flourish.

History

Intellectual property rights are quickly morphing out of hand in the European Union. They're used to motivate breaches of freedom of speech, privacy of communication and proper judicial course. We've seen proposals enter and get approved by parliaments that wish to send people to jail or shut them off communication networks for listening to music, and laws that have made it very difficult indeed to be (or to remain) a small-scale entrepreneur.

These proposals are often pushed by very large and rich industries, but not always to their own advantage. In the industries that rely the most on patents, innovation is decreasing (pdf), and in the European Union we have a unique experience with the Database Directive that, while certainly creating more intellectual property rights, did not stimulate European economical development (pdf) or the European population. On the part of the music industry, they have managed to make their customers resent them.

Big business does not always know what it ought to want, and if legislators want to promote culture and innovation, my experience is they should try and do that instead of trodding down roads that already failed a trial and error test.

Kenya has previously only protected property in general, and not intellectual property in particular, leaving it up to the legislator to decide whether commodification of common cultural goods or knowledge heritage is appropriate or not. And while European and American politicians have started to discover copyright problems with fair use, orphan works and common cultural heritages, Kenya and other African nations have been urging for exceptions for education, libraries, general dissemination, higher access to medicines and more possibilities for small scale entrepreneurship (such as domestic innovation not consisting of state of the art technology, but adapted to the educational and economical development of a local and regional market).

Small scale businesses: opportunities and possibilities

Most regions in the world where the economic growth is the largest is where the intellectual property protection has been the lowest, or least enforced. These regions typically also have a thriving climate for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs (pdf).

Those considerations are sadly lacking in the European economic policies. While small and medium sized enterprises stand for 50% of the European economy, and employ more than 90% of the European population, in policy making they're made to be only worth their existance to the extent that they can grow or be incorporated in larger enterprises (pdf).

The tactics of making legislation that re-affirms the strong players' place in the market may be useful in the short-term, especially for the strong players. For economic development and the growth of a domestic industry without previous strong actors, it can't be. The effects may, in the worst case, make the Kenyan economy benefit the European economy more than it benefits Kenyans.

From the European perspective, such a course by Kenya would signal a success of the European legislative tactics and lock our economic development in with the strong players as well. A need for rejuvenation and adaption of the European economy to the time of instantaneous information transfer would fall on its head and turn European business practises into practises of channeling Kenyan gains into themselves.

Collective rights

But what about the community-protecting parts of the constitutional draft?

The reformed constitution also aims at protecting the traditional knowledge of Kenyan socities by introducing collective rights for cultural heritage. It's certainly experimental. It's not present in European constitutional culture to specify types of intellectual property and their extent in constitutions. Creating collective intellectual property rights hasn't been tried at all in Europe, to my knowledge. It would likely be an ineffective way of protecting Kenyan cultural heritage against trademarking and patenting in European and American economies. Intellectual property law is still based in the nation state so the Kenyan jurisdiction can't touch those who wish to exploit their traditional knowledge or genetic resources. Considering the few advantages I see with such a right, I would be cautious about introducing it into a constitution.

The European experience to me is also that double intellectual property rights protection is more likely to stay double, rather than negate the effects of one or the other.

A Kenyan collective right is likely to be applicable only where a European company with a trademark or patent in Europe is active also on Kenyan soil, or to the extent that the Kenyan collective can withstand law suits. Neither scenario is likely, and once again, from where I'm standing, keeping the information flows as open as possible is that which will bring the greatest remedies to the cultural robbery plight.

Conclusion

Intellectual property law is still based in the nation state, but is very much shaped globally. A reform in one part of the world does not go without consequences in other parts, but, contrary to what some may imagine, the effects are rarely beneficial to either party.

An approval of the intellectual property rights provisions in the Kenyan constitution could come to be an example of that.

At best, they will not benefit European and American industries so much that they completely strangle Kenyan innovation, and they will not lock Europe and America on the path to democratic failure induced by our own intellectual property law reforms. At worst, and as often happens, a law reform in Kenya will create a precedent for reform in the entire East-African region, and become part of a global web that will lock in East-Africa, Europe and the Americas in an information policy of law suits and power concentration, harmful to creativity as well as innovation.

Hopefully, I have provided a European perspective that may make Kenyan policy makers consider the implications of reforming the constitution in this way one more time.

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Be Careful What You Wish For: Now That Kenya's Been Pushed To Recognize IP, It's Starting To Protect More

Mike Masnick — Fri, 2 Jul 2010 18:34:46 PDT

IP maximalists should be careful what they wish for. As we noted in China, where after years of diplomatic pressure, China's "crackdowns" on IP infringement seems to have hurt foreign companies, it looks like something similar may soon happen in Kenya. Last year we discussed how Kenya had been pressured into an anti-counterfeiting treaty (similar to ACTA) that was leading to problems where legitimate generic drugs were being destroyed. However, Amelia Andersdotter alerts us to the news that Kenya's new proposed constitution includes a special section saying that "the state shall support, promote and protect the intellectual property rights of the people of Kenya."

What's that going to mean in practice? Well, a Kenyan lawyer's discussion of the new section of the constitution suggests that this is not about creating incentives for greater creation or innovation. No, instead, it's about trying to put a price tag on anyone else building off of Kenyan culture:

This provision seeks to ensure that Kenyan communities are protected from exploitation and the loss of elements of their cultural heritage to the wider world. Examples of such loss include the patenting of the kiondo -- a hand-woven bag made from sisal with leather trimmings, originating in Kenya and mostly associated with the Kamba and Kikuyu communities -- by an unknown Japanese entity; and the attempted registration of the word 'kikoi' as a trademark by a company in the United Kingdom. A kikoi is a traditional cloth garment mainly found in East African countries such as Kenya and Tanzania and is used as a wrap by women.

Really? So Kenya wants to patent a design of a traditional bag so that no other country can make it? That's not intellectual property, whose purpose is to create incentives for new creativity and innovation. It's blatant protectionism against foreign competition. And then taking control over a word used in a totally different country? Again, that has nothing to do with creativity or innovation. So, now that the western world has pushed Kenya to "recognize" intellectual property, rather than understanding the actual purpose of intellectual property, it seems to be embedding the concept into its constitution in a manner that has nothing, whatsoever, to do with encouraging innovation or creativity.

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Kenya's Anti-Counterfeiting Act Challenged As Violating The Right To Health

Mike Masnick — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:01:00 PST

As a bunch of countries continue to negotiate ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, in secrecy, Kenya already has its own Anti-Counterfeit Act. Michael Geist points us to the news that that particular law is now being challenged in Kenya for violating peoples "right to health." The issue is worth following, because it will almost certainly become an issue assuming ACTA moves forward. Whenever we discuss ACTA, it's inevitable that someone stops by to say that anti-counterfeiting is really, really important to stop dangerous counterfeit drugs from being sold, potentially harming people. Now, I have no doubt that counterfeit drugs may be a serious problem -- but if that's the problem, we should target a narrow attack on that problem alone, not some wider "anti-counterfeiting" effort.

We've already seen that lobbyist-funded and promoted reports on the "counterfeiting problem" are widely exaggerated, and any real "problem" is much smaller than the numbers that get tossed around. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that counterfeit products quite frequently lead to purchases of the real product in the future (i.e., people aren't "fooled" into buying counterfeits -- they know they're buying counterfeits). But that's with things like luxury goods. What about drugs?

Well, we've already seen that big pharmaceutical companies conveniently like to use anti-counterfeiting laws not to stop dangerous counterfeit drugs, but to destroy legitimate generic drugs. It's not about making sure that drugs and people are safe -- but quite the opposite. It's about limiting competition so that these pharma firms can jack up prices even higher.

And that's the issue in Kenya. About 90% of the drugs in Kenya are generics -- for a very good reason. Those drugs are much cheaper and are helpful in saving many lives. The Kenyan anti-counterfeit law makes counterfeiting a criminal issue, rather than a civil one, and gives the power to police and border officials, who have no way of knowing counterfeit from generic, so often label generic drugs as being counterfeits. There are plenty of good reasons to try to stop counterfeit drugs from hitting the market, but if that's the real problem, any solution should be narrowly focused on that specific problem. Unfortunately, since it's quite often the big pharmaceutical lobbyists who help write and push through these bills, that's not how it works at all.

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