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The Kenya copyright board KECOBO has revoked the license of three collective management organizations.

The three namely Kenya Association of Music producers (KAMP), the Performers rights society of Kenya (PRISK), and the music copyright society of Kenya (MSCK) licenses for failure to meet its licensing conditions.

Through KECOBO’s board of directors, a notice sent to the newsroom states that the board had earlier in the year issued the three music royalty collecting societies with provisional licenses as they allowed the time to meet the conditions set by the board.

The notice states that this follows show cause letters issued to the CMOS for noncompliance to the licensing conditions, specifically breach of administrative cost limit and diversion of royalties into an undeclared account which operations are unmonitored by KECOBO.

The notice by KECOBO further says

“The board at its meeting of August 11, 2021, further took note of the recent distribution of royalties where the CMOS distributed Sh41 million 35.9% instead of sh79 million from Sh114milion collected at the end of July 2021 in defiance to the KECOBO license conditions it should be noted that the distribution excludes money received and expensed in the other accounts KECOBO is a monitoring system,’’ the statement by KECOBO read.

According to KECOBO the board was dissatisfied with the CMO explanation in response to show cause letters involved the provision of section 46(9) of the copyright act to register KAMP and MCSK.

‘’Following the revocation of licenses, collection of royalties has been suspended for three months until further advised,’’ the statement further said.

KECOBO also said the board will in conjunction with relevant ministries shortly commence the process of seeking views in reforming the CMO legal structure to prevent recurrence of the misuse of funds by CMOS.

Meanwhile, the board asked right holders to be patient and await public consultation on this matter.

Back in December, KECOBO had warned revoking MCSK operating license after it failed to submit a complete authenticated list of members and their works to the National Register.

On the same breath the board ordered the Kenya Association of Music Producers and the Performance Rights Society of Kenya to continue collecting the royalties on behalf of producers of sound recordings and performers, respectively.  Over the years, artists have expressed dissatisfaction with the collection of royalties by the said bodies