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{
    "id": 768842,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/768842/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 108,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Njagua",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13283,
        "legal_name": "Charles Kanyi Njagua",
        "slug": "charles-kanyi-njagua"
    },
    "content": "was drafted in 2001. This was a long time ago. Hence, there is need to review the Act and make it current. I would like to recommend the broadening of this amendment Act. The 2001 Copyright Act was very narrow in definition owing to the time. The industry has now expanded to include a lot of things that were categorised under arts. For example, we now have spoken word. Comedy is also categorised under arts, juts as we now have sign language in music. The amendments in Sections 5, 6, 11, 19 and 22 of the 2001 Copyright Act have to do with the refreshing of the Act to be in line with the new Constitution. The Copyright Board has over the years been constrained in performing its mandate. This is the reason why this Bill under Sections 5 and 6 of the 2001 Act, seeks to clarify the functions and composition of the board members. The requirements in Section 11 of the Act state that the person should be a qualified advocate of the High Court with five years’ experience in senior position in the copyright office. That is good. I suggest that we add to that the requirement that a person should be a practitioner in the art industry who is directly affected by the conduct of the Copyright Board. I recommend involvement of artists directly in the claim of loyalties as in Section 30 of No.12 of the Copyright Act, 2001. Involving the organisations representing the artists is fine but the Act should go further to put measures into place for involvement of the artists directly. This is because in many occasions organisations have claimed loyalties for artists even without their consent. We have seen this in the Skiza tunes saga, where money did not reach the artists but instead it was shared among a few people in the organisation of collecting societies. This calls for the need to involve the artists in claiming and managing the loyalties. We have situations whereby an offender is taken to court and convicted. However, the pirated art still remains in circulation. This continues infringing on the rights of the original producer of the arts. In this sense therefore, I highly agree with Clause 30 of these amendments which allows for destruction of any materials seized upon order of the court, if a charged person is convicted. Finally, Kenya still lacks national conviction on the intrinsic value that performing arts plays in society. Most media houses would opt to pay loyalties for foreign content at the expense of locally produced content. We cannot and should not disown our own but rather put in place framework that cultivates our art such as increasing the airplay threshold for locally produced content. I would like to comment on the issue of collecting societies as written in Section 46 of the Copyright Act, 2001. First, a collection society should be artist-oriented and should not be a busy entity whose aim is to exploit artists. To ensure this, these amendments should put stringent measures to be followed by the Board before licensing any collecting society. I agree with the provision stating that there should not be more than one collecting society in a single art class. This will prevent confusion and overlapping of mandate. Section 47 of the Act also mandates the Copyright Board to be a regulator of collecting societies. This is welcome as all collecting societies must be regulated and audited yearly for the purpose of licensing. With those few remarks, I support these amendments. Thank you."
}