The Kenya Copyright Board has warned Kenyans against participating in a Cadbury competition dubbed “In Our Own Words”.
In a statement on Monday, Kecobo Executive Director Edward Sigei said the board reviewed the terms of the campaign and found them to be unethical and amounts to subjecting writers to degrading treatment while taking away their intellectual property rights.
"The public is advised to avoid the campaign until authors’ rights are well recognised and paid for."
"The campaign requires authors to forfeit their moral rights to be recognised as an author in connection with their work as well as their economic rights in their literary work in return for a mere thank you note," Sigei said.
He noted that the board has also written to Cadbury to have the terms of the competition revised.
Through the initiative, Cadbury had announced that it would use the stories from participants to create contemporary Kenyan storybooks for children which would be available on their website for free to anyone.
According to the company, this would help ignite the love for reading among children.
Kecobo insists that the author of copyright work owns both economic and moral rights in the work.
"While economic rights can be transferred for a remuneration under Section 26 of the Copyright Act, moral rights under Section 32 of the Act are not transmissible under any circumstances," the statement said.
Edited by D Tarus
