Creative Commons Launches Kenya Chapter

The Kenyan Chapter of Creative Commons (CC Kenya) was officially launched on Thursday 8^th November at the Strathmore Business School during a Kenya Formative Meeting. The meeting was moderated by Alex Gakuru, CC Africa Regional Director.

Creative Commons is not new in Kenya with its licenses having been in use by a few Kenyan online content creators. However, Kenya was until now a CC community but has progressed to an affiliate country. Other affiliate countries in Africa include Egypt, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa.

Copyright is the rights a content creator has to ownership of their content hence the famous, “All Rights Reserved.” In Kenya, Kenya Copyright Board (KeCoBo) is the body mandated to handle copyright issues. Paul Nzeveka from KeCoBo gave an overview of KeCoBo’s functions and the steps being taken to integrate framework into the Kenyan law that adequately addresses online content copyright. For more information on KeCoBo visit their website.

Traditionally, copyright has been negotiated on an individual basis between copyright holder and potential* licensee creative works. “All Rights Reserved” is a tall order in the digital space. The amount of information being shared is huge and for users to have to constantly contact content owners to use their content can be burdensome for both the users and owners. Imagine receiving thousands of emails requesting permission to use your work? Also, a lot of content creators put up their content online to share it for free.

CC aims to facilitate the legal sharing of creative works especially online content by providing a number of free copyright license options. A CC license outlining which rights the copyright holder is willing to waive enables the general public to use such works more freely. Hence, “some rights reserved.” Dr. Tobias, CC Africa Regional Director gave a history of CC as well as an overview of its activities in Africa.

Other speakers of the day included Dr. Joseph Sevilla, Director iLab Africa, Isaac Rutenberg, The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT)  and Wikimedia Kenya all whom reiterated the need to share ideas more widely and collaboration to see those ideas flourish.

Open Education Resource (OER) Africa, facilitates the sharing of online course materials and has successfully been rolled out in various universities on the African continent. Catherine Ngugi, OER Africa, gave examples of the success OER continues to enjoy and the great news that the initiative will be rolled out in Kenyan universities in the near future.

The last speaker of the day was Michael Murungi of National Council for Law Reporting. The National Council for Law Reporting is a state corporation mandated to publish the official Kenya Law Reports. They are one of the many organizations in the world that are making use of a CC licence.

The last agenda of the day was the announcement of the public and legal leads of the CC Kenya Chapter. These are CIPIT for public lead and National Council for Law Reporting for legal lead. The public lead is the spokesperson for CC in Kenya while the legal lead educates and advises users on legal matters to do with CC.

CC is officially in Kenya and all content creators are encouraged to take an active interest in it. Begin by following @CCKenya and attending the 10^th birthday celebrations for CC that are scheduled to be held on 13^th December at Strathmore University. Happy sharing!