| dc.description.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. | en |
