NETFLIX TO CHARGE FOR PASSWORD SHARING

Netflix will begin to crack down on users who share their passwords with people who do not live in the same household.

Kenyans with friends or relatives in the US for example also get to use US-based accounts to access content typically not available in the country.

Netflix now wants to charge for that privilege.

An extra charge of about $2.98 is to apply as the streaming site moves to curb the practice of password sharing to non-paying users.

According to Techradar, "The streaming giant is currently testing a pair of new features that, while enabling memberships outside the main account household, will also add a little surcharge.

The "Add an Extra Member" feature allows those on Standard and Premium plans to add "sub accounts" for up to two people living at a different address (think friends, distant relatives, or your student studying at Harvard). For an additional $2.99, these sub members will get their own ID and passwords, profiles, and personalized recommendations."

GOOGLE DOMAINS YET TO BE AVAILABLE IN KENYA

 

Google announced that its domain name service registry, (domains.google) has left Beta phase after being in the test mode since 2015.

It will now be available across different countries but not in Kenya unfortunately.

For about US$18 (KES 2000) you will be able to register your domain with a choice of 300 different endings.

According to ZDNet, the end of the Beta Phase took place yesterday.

Kenya is not among the countries that Domains is available at. According to their domains.google website;

You can only purchase on Google Domains if your billing address is in a supported country. Google Domains is currently available for users in the following countries:

• Australia
• Belgium
• Brazil
• Canada
• France
• Germany
• India
• Indonesia
• Italy
• Japan
• Malaysia
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Philippines
• Poland
• Singapore
• South Africa
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Thailand
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• United States 
• Vietnam

KENYANS HIT IN SH1.1BN ($10m) CRYPTO PONZI SCHEME

Shocked Kenya crypto "investors" hit Twitter yesterday to complain about their inability to withdraw funds from their crypto wallets in an investment scheme called Bitstream Circle which appears to have shut down after mopping US$10m from majority Kenyans and other African victims of the scam.

The scheme promised returns of 5-10% daily and you had to register with a minimum of $20 (KES2,200) to join the bonanza.

As crypto enthusiast, Kimani Capital, who goes by the telling handle @retireby29 tweeted, he overcame his initial suspicions after following BT for a couple of weeks during which he saw a training video and also learnt that a physical meeting with "Investors" had taken place in Nairobi.

The training video showed investors how to open an account and trade on the platform.

The business model according to him, was:

1. You deposit $20 in their trading exchange

2. You get added to the Telegram Group

3. BT gives trading signals at specific time periods, 5 times a day.

4. Use the signals to trade on the "Exchange".

5. Make guaranteed 5-8% return on investment daily.

Investors were asked to follow instructions on daily trading where they would be issued with specific guidelines and amounts to trade at given times of the day. 

"You had to strictly follow the instructions to the letter," @retireby29 says. "You had to strictly trade at the respective time...so literally I had to set alarms and stop what I was doing during trading time."

He says over 300 Kenyans, and over 500 Africans from 7 different countries were signing up daily to Bitstream. 

Transactions were done using the dollar-backed stablecoin USDT. The cryptocurrency has the same exchange rate to the shilling as the US dollar.

One withdrawal per day was allowed which he says would take 30 minutes to reflect in his Binance account.

Things looked to be going well until one day, 13th March, 2022, investors encountered a hitch withdrawing their funds. They were informed that a system upgrade was underway and would be back online in 5 hours. That is when, @retireby29 says, he knew the gig was up.

But before the curtain call, the scammers could not resist one last caper and anyone who sought customer support was asked to "deposit" 10% of their investment, and they would be able to withdraw all their funds. Needless to say, those funds also disappeared, along with Bitstream Circle, or BT as the investors called it.

It turns out that the basic Ponzi scheme works the same whether in the village or on the net, new gullible people's money pays those who came before them, and so on, until the scheme is saturated.

Folks who had been warned about the suspect fundamentals of the scheme, in typical fashion, bristled and dismissed the party-poopers.

The Central Bank of Kenya in 2016, warned Kenyans against getting into crypto products adding that there is no recourse in law for those who burnt their fingers. Earlier this year, the CBK Governor, Patrick Njoroge reiterated that the regulator had not changed its position regarding crypto products. He however, promised that a broader policy outlook on the crypto space, including but not limited to cryptocurrencies, would be forthcoming in the near to mid-term. 

Kenyans however, have been very active in peer to peer crypto-trading ranking number 1 globally according to Chainalysis. Overall, the country is ranked number 5 in the Global Crypto Adoption Index, behind Vietnam, India, Pakistan, and Ukraine.

SAFARICOM SUFFERS DOUBLE SETBACK AS SPORTS RIGHT OWNERS, CREATIVES WIN IN COPYRIGHT BATTLE

It was a tough outing for Safaricom yesterday as Parliament dealt it two blows with the Copyright Amendment Bill which cleared its third reading with victory for artistes, and TV rights owners.

The Bill had drawn rival interests around two areas: illegal streaming of content, and revenue share for ring back tunes between artistes, and Safaricom.

Live sports enthusiasts have long used unofficial streaming sites to watch football matches and other sports which normally are under exclusive broadcasting rights for the region. The Copyright Act requires that networks block access to, or take down such content, when notified by the rights holders. The proposed amendment, would have struck down these provisions leaving rights holders powerless to enforce their Intellectual Property rights.

"The amendments are not progressive, they are retrogressive therefore we cannot carry them...,” Gladys Wanga, who had tabled the Bill, told the MPs during the Committee of the Whole House.

In addition, Safaricom will have to increase the amount it pays to artistes for having their music on its ring back tunes to at least52% of the revenue, and ensure the money is paid to them directly instead of middlemen.

TELCOS TO REMAIN LIABLE FOR PIRATED CONTENT THEY FAIL TO REMOVE ON DEMAND

Safaricom and Jamii Telecom will pivot back to the Court of Appeal in a case in which they are accused of failing to take down or block copyrighted content that their users access or stream on their networks.

This is after Parliament dropped planned amendments to the Copyright Act of 2019 which introduced take-down notices for ISPs and other networks for content that was illegally downloaded or accessed via their networks.

The clauses require that upon notice by the copyright or broadcast rights holder, the ISP should take down the offending content or block access to it. Failing this, the ISP is to face liability for breaching intellectual property rights.

This is where the two Kenyan telcos find themselves after they were sued by broadcast content distributor, Multichoice Kenya, for failing to prevent illegal access to sports content that the company has exclusive broadcast rights to.

If the amendments to Section 35B, C and D of the Act had gone through, then the telcos would have been freed from this liability and the said case would be moot. However Parliament dropped the amendments amidst fierce lobbying by industry bodies, creatives and sports rights holders.

“The amendments are not progressive, they are retrogressive therefore we cannot carry them in a bill that is meant to protect artists,” MP Gladys Wanga, who had proposed the amendments, told the MPs during the Committee of the Whole House.

MPs SIGNAL RETREAT ON CONTENTIOUS COPYRIGHT LAW CHANGES

 

Partners Against Piracy (PAP) has welcomed the statement by sponsor of the Copyright Amendment Bill 2021, Hon. Gladys Wanga, that proposed amendments to the Copyright Act relating to takedown notices for internet service providers (ISPs) will be scrapped.

 

On 15 February 2022, the Parliamentary Committee on Communication, Information & Innovation heard memoranda submitted by various stakeholders regarding the Bill.

 

PAP, a Pan-African, multi-sectoral coalition of stakeholders supporting the creative industry in Kenya, was in attendance, calling for the deletion of Clauses 5, 6 and 7 in the Bill, which propose repeals of Sections 35B, 35C and 35D in the Copyright Act.

 

Assented into law by President Uhuru Kenyatta in October 2019, Sections 35B, 35C and 35D are game-changing provisions for Kenya, and the first of their kind in Africa (although common internationally). The provisions protect the creative industry in Kenya by providing incentives and a legal basis for better co-operation with ISPs, to avoid them being accused of enabling piracy, and to support rightsholders in their fight against piracy.

 

Repealing sections 35B, 35C and 35D would weaken the fight against content piracy, as it would remove the first line of defense – the ISPs and other platforms that could potentially enable piracy. The Bill proposed to scrap the allowance for issuing ISPs with take-down notices, which direct them to remove content suspected of violating copyright.

 

Economically, removing 35B, 35C and 35D could mean a KES 14.3 billion per year loss to Kenyan creatives and a KES 16.3 billion per year loss in taxes to the government – funds that could be used to develop Kenya’s creative industry and local communities. Total losses could amount to KES 92 billion per year, as most digital content is priced in foreign currency, as are the costs of platforms, distributors, and retailers, among others.

 

Through the global awareness raised by PAP and its supporters since the first reading of the Bill last November, parliament has received an avalanche of local and international memoranda against the proposed repeal of sections 35B, 35C and 35D.

 

Protestations from local stakeholders in this matter include Hon. John Kiarie, (MP) who declared that “the proposal to repeal these sections represent the biggest setback in the history of copyright and is akin to disarming Kenyan authors and rights holders.”

 

In addition, the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK), in their #SAYNOTOREMOVALOFSECTION35B-35D and #Handsoffsection35B campaigns, agree and reinforce the widely held view that “piracy is currently devastating the creative industry in Kenya,” and that repealing sections 35B-35D of the Copyright Act would “encourage online piracy and loss of revenue making it difficult for creatives to recoup their investments, thereby killing the creative industry.”

 

Speaking on the proposed repealing of Sections 35B, 35C and 35D, Hon. Wanga, said, “As soon as we go to the floor, in the third reading, all those amendments will be dropped. This is to assure our content creators that this House is not about taking away the gains that we have made in protecting our content creators from piracy.”

 

She continued, “I have received many calls. This morning I received a call from a congressman in the United States and everyone is concerned. This was never the intention of these amendments. These amendments are meant to support our artists and the broader industry to make sure our artists and content creators are protected – certainly not to take away those very rights.”

 

A recent letter from the Sports Rights Owners Coalition (SROC), signed by chairman Mark Lichtenstein, said its members were “extremely concerned” at the proposed changes to the Copyright Act if the Bill became law – particularly the plan to repeal sections 35B, 35C and 35D.

 

According to Kenya Copyright Board (KeCOBO) executive director Edward Sigei, “take-down notices are a critical tool for copyright holders and related rights holders to fight digital content piracy by controlling the distribution and economic viability of their work and how it is accessed online.”

SPORTS RIGHTS BODY RAISES ALARM OVER COPYRIGHT LAW CHANGES IN KENYA

 

A coalition of global sports bodies has written an open letter to the Kenyan government, expressing concern about the Copyright Amendment Bill currently before parliament, and its potential impact on the availability of international sports content in Kenya.

The Sports Rights Owner Coalition (SROC) is an alliance of more than 50 international and national sport bodies, representing some of the world’s leading sport codes and competitions – including the English Premier League, the FA Cup, Wimbledon, MotoGP, and the Rugby World Cup.

In the recent letter, signed by Chairman Mark Lichtenstein, the SROC says its members are “extremely concerned” at changes that will be made to Kenya’s Copyright Act if the Copyright Amendment Bill becomes law.

The SROC is particularly worried about proposals to repeal sections 35B, 35C and 35D of the Copyright Act, which allow for take-down notices issued to internet-based service provider platforms which enable content piracy to flourish.

A take-down notice is a widely used remedy employed by copyright owners worldwide, compelling online platforms to rapidly remove content from their websites if it is suspected that the content infringes copyright.

The Kenya Copyright Board (KeCOBO) champion of the Partners Against Piracy (PAP) initiative, has come out in support of the SROC letter.

“Take-down notices are a critical tool for copyright holders and related rights holders to fight digital content piracy by controlling the distribution and economic viability of their work and how it is accessed online,” says Edward Sigei, KeCOBO Executive Director.

“Across the world, they help to safeguard the intellectual property rights of sports rights owners. If rights owners cannot request that pirated sports content is taken down immediately, that will threaten the future of live sports broadcasts in Kenya. Why would international sports media allow sports broadcasts in Kenya, if they have no way of stopping them from being pirated!”

Kenya’s 2019 Copyright Amendment Bill, incorporates principles from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Internet Treaties of 1996, aimed at preventing unauthorised access to and use of creative works. Takedown notices are among these principles and are necessary tools to enforce copyright protections for rights owners and distributors.

If the Amendment Bill is passed into law, Kenya will be out of step with global trends, the average Kenyan will lose out on great sports entertainment.  A further negative consequence of this Amendment Bill passing would be the reputational and economic investment quagmire it would create is jeopardising Kenya’s ability to renew participation in the Africa Growth and Opportunity Agreement (AGOA) program, as one of the additional provisions of renewal requires a demonstrated commitment to copyright protection as a prerequisite to signing. Repealing section 35 of the Copyright Act, would do the exact opposite and threaten investor confidence.

The SROC points out that in Europe, policy makers are strengthening not weakening the effectiveness of take-down notices, particularly regarding live content. New proposals to protect live content more effectively in Europe are expected in the first half of 2022.

“Were the Copyright Amendment Bill to be enacted, it could have devastating consequences for both the Kenyan economy and Kenyan consumers,” says the SROC letter. “Rights holders from sport and other creative industries are extremely unlikely to license their content in a jurisdiction that effectively legitimises piracy. Consumers would therefore be deprived from watching their favourite sports and television shows, and leave Kenya isolated on the global copyright stage.”

The coalition – which includes the English FA, UEFA, the IAAF, and the International Tennis Federation – goes on to ask that the proposed new law be urgently reconsidered “so as not to harm Kenyan consumers and threaten the availability of sports and entertainment content in Kenya.”