Kate Bishop, Swashbuckling in Uncharted Waters: Combatting Digital Piracy with Dynamic Injunctions in Emerging Audio-Visual Markets, 42 Wis. Int'l L.J. 553 (2025).
Digital piracy threatens to sabotage developing creative economies. As the internet has grown, so has copyright infringement, and digital piracy is pervasive. Emerging digital economies have struggled to grow and compete under the weight of infringement that hinders investment and discourages creators. The digital economy in Kenya is one such growing creative industry that has experienced setbacks because of widespread infringement. The Kenyan government is working to improve copyright protection. Since 2019, the Kenyan Copyright Act has undergone several extensive changes. Creative industries have experienced a changing landscape from internal and external forces reacting to the fast pace of technological development.
Over a similar timeline, since 2019, India began using dynamic injunctions to fight digital piracy. A proactive, court-created tool, dynamic injunctions have proven effective against piracy of copyrighted works. Many countries have begun using flexible enforcement measures to keep up with digital piracy’s changing nature. Dynamic injunctions extend injunctions beyond the original court order to include websites reposting the infringing content at a new web address.
One of the primary concerns of increased copyright enforcement is the need to maintain a balance between copyright protection and freedom of expression. Indian courts have implemented judicial oversight of expansion requests. Kenyan courts should follow the Indian example and interpret the law to allow for the creation of dynamic injunctions while limiting the power of such injunctions through judicial scrutiny.
