How Nigeria's Seki Dance has Redefined Performance Rights of the Indigenous Peoples
4 Pages Posted: 7 Aug 2024
Date Written: June 05, 2023
Abstract
The African indigenous creativity is being digitally enabled for entrepreneurial capacity and for the Artificial Intelligence era. The global IP community for more than 30 years now has been struggling with how to legally recognize culture, folklore, traditional cultural expressions and traditional knowledge with an intellectual property-like protection or some formal type of legal protection. However, after the signing of the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performance (BTAP) in 2012 and its accession by majority of the WIPO Treaty nations-dance, audiovisual actors, and other forms of transient creativity and creations have been recognized as performance, that attracts IP protection. The protagonists of these works are now regarded by law as performers, whose works now attract IP protection. The performance of their works on audiovisual platforms and spaces (a creation of the digital era) has also been recognized by the new jurisprudence including that of Nigeria.
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