New Media and the Creative Sector in Kenya: Intellectual Property Challenges & Implications

Abstract

The changing business environment, with specific regard to changes in communication technology brought on by the Internet, encourages and facilitates the emergence of global business, transnational companies and the emergence of common markets around the world, and in Kenya. The rising density and sophisticated nature of interaction between the worlds of art (and/or culture) and new media calls far a radical rethink on the frameworks that govern these interactions. It is a widely acknowledged fact that creators draw upon a wealth of pre-existing material in developing new works. Access to and availability of a robust public domain is critical to the creative process. A lot of debate and heat hasbeen generated globally on both sides of the issue of the impact that new media technologies have or are likely to have on the cultural heritage of communities in the global south. Somewhere between the extreme ends of cultural expropriation (the commodification of a peoples' cultural wealth for the economic benefit of others) occasioned by the emergence of digital technologies on the one hand, and the complete walling off of a rich body of cultural heritage, lies a path to a robust creative commons that the researcher believes can best be charted by copyright law. It is imperative that persons or communities who invest their efforts and skill in the production of intellectual property creations should be able to exercise some control over their use. One of the central questions of this study is how copyright which is in the current age primarily held by Western corporations, and, to a lesser degree, individuals in Western countries, can be reoriented to serve the interests of creators in the poorer Southern hemisphere countries. The researcher thus discusses the importance of copyright law to communities in Kenya and the global south generally in the growth ofthe cultural and creative economics within a new digital world.