Miguna May However, Still Sue Robert Alai For Illegal Distribution.
Miguna has now shifted his attention from the poor Robert Alai to the dipper pockets at Nation Media Group. If you missed it, Miguna had threatened to sue Robert Alai for violation of his copyright. On Wednesday, Robert Alai, shared the download link to his thousands of twitter follows and by this morning the book has been downloaded almost 15,000 times from that link alone. It is also believed to have been shared much more times on emails and on flash disks.
Miguna says that NMG is a prime suspect in the leak, since they are the only ones who had access to the e-copy.
“The only good thing is that the version they are peddling is not exactly the same; it has no pictures, the cover and obviously no index, which will come from the reprints,” he said in an email response to a query by Capital FM News.
The penalty for copyright infringement is Sh 800,000 or a maximum prison term of 10 years. Complicating matters for Robert Alai however, Kenya Copyright Board Executive Director Marisella Ouma said, “If the case is that somebody managed to get the book from somewhere without the authority of the rights holder and then put it onto the Internet and circulated it, then the publisher and the author can actually bring legal action against them. But you see, under copyright law, it doesn’t say that the person who originally circulated it is basically the person who would be reproducing, distributing, selling, renting so whether you are in the first or fifth tier, it doesn’t matter.”
She added that distribution amounted to ‘killing’ the author’s work as they do not get any reward from it.
Nation Media Group CEO said that they did not breach the contract and their only motive was to serialize the book, which they did successfully.
© nairobiwire.com
