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{
    "id": 956487,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/956487/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 334,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Suba North, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Ms.) Odhiambo-Mabona",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 376,
        "legal_name": "Millie Grace Akoth Odhiambo Mabona",
        "slug": "millie-odhiambo-mabona"
    },
    "content": "to say that it is also important for this country, especially in this digital era. There are so many issues coming up. I cannot broadly see them in the treaty. Even after this Treaty is ratified by us, as a country, it challenges us to look at providing a comprehensive law or amend some existing laws to look at issues of digitalisation. Access to the general public has become so easy because of the digital era. We have so many experts. It has its benefits. It also pains. I think all of us recently saw this young boy who was speaking from the Consolata Primary School. I can imagine this young boy thought he was speaking to a small group of his class, but then all these things suddenly turned viral and the next thing he knows are the police in his school. What he thought was a joke, from what he observes, became a serious issue. You can see from what that boy was doing. He was watching a movie, but he thought he was acting one. He suddenly discovers that this is not a movie. It is real life. In the same manner, you can extrapolate this and see that we have young people who would wait for a big event for them to be discovered or known. Now, every young person who is able to get a gadget can dance, sing and be discovered. They can also be exploited. There is a part of the treaty that talks about moral rights. When I was looking at it, it grants moral rights; the right to claim to be identified as the performer except where such an omission would be dictated by the manner of the use of the performance and the right to object to any distortion, mutilation or modification that would be prejudicial to the performance reputation, taking into account the nature of the audio-visual fixation. I think that is very positive. We know, especially with the internet, that you put in one thing and it comes out a totally different thing. One woman Member of Parliament was sharing with me something that I wrote on my Facebook account, but it was a totally different thing by the time it was reaching the woman Member of Parliament. It is okay because she can talk to me. What about when it is audio-visual? It may be dancing and I am singing in a choir in church, but somebody distorts it and I look like I am dancing naked with witchdoctors? So, this protects the performance from distortion. My only concern is that it is one thing to protect the performers. What about the right to protect the public? It is like the older generation and those in the middle ages like me are against the younger generation. I want to speak in relation to one artiste called Akothee. She has been very controversial. When she performed, I cannot remember in which country, everybody was like “this is totally immoral. She should not have performed dressed this way” yet we celebrate Beyoncé when she dresses in a similar manner. I know it talks about our moral crisis as a nation. What I would want us to see, maybe not to address it as a moral issue, is probably what we consider modest. I do not say that we stop Akothee from doing her act. I am fairly liberal, but it is because of the nature of our society. How far can we go and how far can we not go? I am saying this because we had a very interesting debate about d isco matanga earlier on. I can use that as an example. When I walked in, the Speaker said, “You want to talk and you have just come in”. What I had wanted to say then, which relates even to the matter before us now, is that, because we are an evolving society, some things that would have made sense in the past may not make sense to us now. An example is disco matanga, which people have corrupted because that is not what they were meant to be. It was actually the African traditional way of therapy. People would sit with somebody who was bereaved."
}