Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Video Stores incursions into Kenya's Film Exhibition industry 1989!!

 By 1988 a US report titled 'Foreign Protection of Intellectual Rights and the effect on US Industry and Trade' identified Kenya among other countries for losses!!

By 1989 things in Kenya was becoming desperate as by then Indian movies were all watched at home on pirated VHS copies to the detriment of cinemas. It baffles the mind as to why KFC did not demand 50% of the revenues of the Video Stores as it did from the Kenyan Cinemas. In the West, video stores had to pay the distributors almost $100 a copy or share revenue at 50%. Pirated copies were rare!
Possibilities cited for inaction in Kenya include that 'big wigs' were involved in the VHS business, technocrats at KFC had been replaced during the Moi era with staff that had less knowledge of the film distribution & exhibition industry, the pace of VHS incursion was very quick & before solutions could be implemented, and the existence of a local culture of wanting something for free & low price with no regard to creators of intellectual property.
One of actions that KFC undertook was to gazette lists of Indian movies, making it specifically illegal for these films to be distributed to video libraries without obtaining approval from KFC!! (see below)! I guess the distributors ignored this?!










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Video Stores incursions into Kenya's Film Exhibition industry 1989!!

  By 1988 a US report titled ' Foreign Protection of Intellectual Rights and the effect on US Industry and Trade ' identified Kenya ...