RESEARCH AND COPYRIGHT; THE KENYAN REALITY.
Copyright is a legal right that authors, publishers and other producers of information-related materials have to protect their work from unauthorized reproduction (Lesman, 1995). It is argued that it originated from the industrial revolution in Europe. Pre-1800, publishing was a preserve of the higher echelons of society; those well-heeled individuals able to pay “copiers” to manually make copies of manuscripts which was both tedious and expensive. With the revolution, came production en masse which threatened publishers who went to their government for protection as they feared for their monopolies over the intellectual, economic and moral rights they held over their publications. This lead to creation of laws to protect intellectual property rights including but not limited to copyright. The Berne Convention (1886) and The Universal Copyright Convention (1952) are two of the earliest treaties signed into existence to adopt uniform standards in enacting copyright legisla...