ccafrica AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Creative Commons Jurisdiction Teams in Sub-Saharan Africa
List archive
- From: charles batambuze <batambuze_charles AT hotmail.com>
- To: <gakuru AT gmail.com>, "dkawooya AT gmail.com" <dkawooya AT gmail.com>
- Cc: CC Africa <ccafrica AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law
- Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2012 08:52:42 +0000
Alex,
You and I know that the Agikuyu are no longer free to sentence anyone to death for stealing for the simple reason that they are no longer on their own but part of the global wider community. So the universal principles of justice somehow limit the excesses of our communities. Take female circumcision for example in as much as it is so dear to some of our communities, it is internationally targeted as a crime of female genital mutilation! The SEACONET copyright model, therefore can never be truly African because of the various vested interests which we have to contend with. These interests are both local and international. For example, yesterday I had a meeting with the President of the Uganda Publishers Association who is seeking for a partnership with my organization to help protect their investments currently under the threat of piracy! Offline piracy of literature, film and music is very real in Uganda and the solution partly lies in a law that provides for enforcement! And the kind of piracy that happens in Uganda is one where for example schools have money to buy textbooks and the suppliers deliver pirated copies. Some schools are known to send back those poor quality books to the publishers so they can get replacement copies. Of course the publishers normally say NO. So we can not completely dismiss the western copyright construct in the face of this outright theft and especially when we begin to focus on strengthening investments in the creative industries most of which are copyright based. I personally believe in options and for this reason I am an ardent advocate of online free using Creative Commons. This effort already has a Uganda CC license to be launched soon; about 8 titles of books by Ugandan commercial publishers under CC license etc. In the debates on the draft SEACONET text I was the lone voice on some of these issues and may not have had as much impact. In Windhoek some two years ago I was nick named Open Access by the RROs people in that meeting because I told them OA was not an enemy! I know SEACONET will make available the text for public use once it is ready. Charles From: gakuru AT gmail.com Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 12:38:53 +0300 Subject: Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law To: dkawooya AT gmail.com CC: batambuze_charles AT hotmail.com; ookolloh AT gmail.com; ccafrica AT lists.ibiblio.org Charles, re: openness, ditto. Agree, that even in (traditional) African culture private property ownership existed. And theft of such private property was punished very severely. For example, amongst the Agikuyu stealing was punishable by death. A muici (thief) would be taken atop hill, wrapped in dry banana leaves, put inside a large beehive set on fire then made to roll down the hill to a screaming example to other tempted thieves. But alongside private existed vast, if not much greater, communal property which anyone was free to reasonably use without destroying nature. These included fetching firewood from the God's forest, hunting for meat etc while still protecting the animals. Today, certain communities still protect wildlife from poaching. We still have an inbuilt extended family and community care quite opposite the Westerners and Northerners individualist extremism--where almost everything is owned by a person. Language words and fonts used to on digital literature (perhaps even emails?) are owned by someone. If Africans were to draft their own model copyright law its content would definitely be quite different from the western copyright construct. Therefore, in as many different ways, all we are asking is for is SEACONET's initiative be open to our scrutiny to guarantee us that their proposal is indeed African or a foreign model forced down our throats? thanks, Alex On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 11:23 AM, Dick Kawooya <dkawooya AT gmail.com> wrote: Yes it will be useful to see the text to judge how good or bad the proposed law is. |
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
Ory Okolloh, 11/01/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
Alex Gakuru, 11/01/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
charles batambuze, 11/02/2012
- Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law, Ory Okolloh, 11/02/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
Dick Kawooya, 11/02/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
Alex Gakuru, 11/02/2012
- Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law, Yemi Lawal, 11/02/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
charles batambuze, 11/03/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
Alex Gakuru, 11/03/2012
- [ccAfrica] @ WIPO SCCR, charles batambuze, 11/20/2012
- Re: [ccAfrica] @ WIPO SCCR, Tobias Schonwetter, 11/20/2012
- Re: [ccAfrica] @ WIPO SCCR, charles batambuze, 11/21/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
Alex Gakuru, 11/03/2012
- Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law, IP Kenya, 11/21/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
Alex Gakuru, 11/02/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
charles batambuze, 11/02/2012
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Re: [ccAfrica] SEACONET Model Copyright law,
Alex Gakuru, 11/01/2012
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