The 'Best Man' may be a pirate in era of high speed Internet

A vendor displays pirated DVDs on sale in the Kenyan market. Real time release of popular films and television series to consumers may help curb trade in counterfeits. FILE 

By Wallace Kantai

In Summary

• Top filmmakers abet counterfeits by delaying release of their products to consumers.

One of my all-time favourite movies is called The Best Man, a romantic comedy (don’t laugh) about a group of black, 20 -something friends learning to navigate the tricky world of career, romance and disappointment.

The film was released in 1999, and I (along with many other fans) was waiting eagerly for a long-rumoured sequel. The sequel was duly announced for release in November last year, but to my disappointment, it was released in New York a week after I had been there, meaning that I had to wait until it was out on DVD – a matter of many months – before I could re-acquaint myself with the characters.

If you are like many Kenyan fans of Best Man Holiday, the sequel in question, the preceding sentence might sound faintly ridiculous. After all, if I really wanted to watch the film, there were very many ways to get my hands and eyeballs on it during the holiday break.

I could have gone to the dozens of Internet ‘torrent’ sites available and downloaded it for myself; I could have kept my hands a little cleaner and gone to my ‘DVD guy’ for a pretty good copy, or I could simply have rolled down my window at a traffic jam on Mombasa Road and negotiated to buy a copy for as little as Sh50.

The fact that I didn’t, and am still waiting to purchase a legitimate DVD copy from Amazon or a similar vendor, is either testament to my naïveté or to my admirable sense of delayed gratification.

Either way, the consumption of filmed entertainment in Kenya – and most of Africa – is a fascinating business case. If properly understood and legitimised, it could up-end the entertainment industry globally, and lead to fascinating new relationships between producers and consumers.

The first issue is the fact that Kenya is the country where entertainment revenues come to die.

Every residential neighbourhood in our urban areas (and in many of our rural areas) is dotted with the aforementioned DVD vendors, who will readily provide you with the latest movies and television series.

Their business model has also changed. Whereas before they had to rely on a supply chain that often began in some back street in China, they now have a broadband connection that they use to download the movies and series on demand.

All of this is patently illegal, despite the fact that they proudly hang out their shingles and advertise their phone numbers. And this is also despite the unconvincing protestations of ignorance and innocence on the part of institutions such as the Kenya Copyright Board.

The second issue is that the voracious consumption of pirated and counterfeit content by Kenyans upends the business model of content distributors – primarily television stations and movie houses.

If a television station airs a compelling first episode of a new dramatic series, it can be sure that its would-be fan base will quickly order up (or download) the entire series – often several seasons’ worth – and consume it all in one weekend.

By the time the second episode airs a week later, the most committed fans have already sated their thirst for the show.

All of which begs the question – why haven’t movie and television producers in countries like the United States ever applied creative thinking to this problem globally? The fact is that the West – mainly the US – is the producer of the most eagerly consumed popular culture.

The Internet has turned distribution and revenue models inside-out, but the industry still insists on treating the rest of the world as an afterthought.