By Victor Bwire,
NAIROBI, Kenya- One of the most pressing challenges to journalists, both in terms of professional practice and welfare, is content theft in various forms, including plagiarism, click bait and information manipulation in this digital era.
Content theft is facilitated by technology and amplified by digital platforms, including machine learning tools such as artificial intelligence deny journalists income, erode credibility and trust in professional practice, and compromising media brands.
Other than in the EU, where there are deliberate legal frameworks and regulations on dealing with the issue of content theft, many countries, like Kenya, don’t have the technical and financial resources to ensure copyright protection of creative works, including journalistic work.
For that, journalists put in so much investment in producing content, which is then picked up by some online content curators, who amplify the same content and dilute it through clickbaiting and earn from the big techs because of traffic, leaving the original news writers without earning anything.
There is no denying the fact that the online platforms have opened opportunities for content creation, especially for people who didn’t necessarily go through conventional journalism training processes, are good in producing news, very focused and are making money, but remain aloof to basic ethical standards and legal requirement in the sector including contracted works, copyrighted materials and original works where the producers depend on to earn a living.
The creation of original content/news is quite involving and expensive, and by stealing such content and sharing it, or manipulating it and by extension, cheapening the content outside journalistic standards, the credibility of the journalists is tainted while media company brands are put in disrepute.
This creates a big risk to journalism, both in terms of revenue and professional practice.
Content theft is not only on digital platforms, but also on radio and TV, where people pick clips from WhatsApp or digital versions of traditional media, and play on their news items without acknowledgement or respect to copyright requirements.
Technology, including AI, has enabled this trend big time. While on one hand the possibility of sharing broadcast content and voices enables local stories to get international attention, widespread circulation, and related, to create doubts in many who are in the area where the content creators were not on the scene.
That you can create a story without necessarily being on the ground.
Other outlets rely on stealing live streams of major events such as national days, Premier League matches and paid for events, without even caring how much the original content creators and live streaming people are spending on production.
Deep investigative stories require heavy resources, and it’s disappointing that immediately after promotions of such content are done, thieves pick the content and start clickbaiting to earn and build their own brands.
You get radio stations in Busijo live streaming events happening in Garsen, while enhancing information spread, but frustrating efforts by original content producers.
As Professor Ben Sihanya, the transmission of broadcasting has raised several intellectual Property (IP) issues, especially relating to digital copyright, trademark, and the domain name system.
In Kenya such matters are protected and arbitrated under the Copyright Act 2001, but increasingly, people are seeking redress through the Media Council of Kenya.
Section 22 of the Act lists copyrightable as: (a) literary work, (b) musical work, (c) artistic work, (d) audio-visual work, (e) sound recording, and (f) broadcasts. Section 2 gives examples under the foregoing categories.
In his article entitled “Media Law in Kenya in the era of digital migration in Kenya”, Prof Sihanya notes that a digital work is protected under copyright if the work is original, and expressed in a tangible, material or fixed form.
He notes that the Act implicitly defines originality in terms of “sufficient effort has been expended on making the work to give it an original character.”
And tangibility refers to “work which has been written down, recorded or otherwise reduced to material form.”
Copyright law protects and promotes the expression of ideas, that is, information, facts, data, formulae, knowledge or concepts.
Copyright protects the intellectual and economic interests of creators, owners, assigns, (sub) licensees and publishers of literary, artistic, musical, and audio-visual works as well as Broadcast.
Digital tools such as X (formerly Twitter), Tix Tox, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube have changed the way people converse, and people can easily ‘tell’ their own stories by side-stepping information gatekeepers or middlepersons who once controlled information and media products.
While online news production and dissemination have enormous opportunities in educating Kenyans and cementing peaceful existence, if not well checked have a negative impact.
Indeed, while several online platforms have been sources of serious positive information, a number have not been.
Aware of the challenges posed by the new platforms, many media enterprises in Kenya have developed anti-theft measures, including paywalls and watermarking, especially for premium content; other media outlets can’t afford this.
Some creative radio stations in Kenya have come up with anti-plagiarism tools that allow editors and supervisors to detect pirated content.
Radio Domus in Kajiado has a tool called Safeguard- a locally developed AI-assisted prototype that helps in content moderation and quality control for content before it is disseminated.
It flags out harmful, misleading content, controls online posting, among others.
