In “Digital Democracy”, the course I help Charlie Nesson teach at HLS, we talk a great deal about folklore, indigeous knowledge and intellectual property rights. A thought experiment that came up in last year’s class: “What if an African nation sought compensation from Disney for their use of folktales in their film, ‘The Lion King’?”

Well, the details are a little different, but it looks like we might just get an answer. The family of South African composer Solomon Linda has filed a claim in South African court against Disney, seeking 1.3m euros in damage for Disney’s use of the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in “The Lion King”.

The song was originally recorded by Linda in 1939 as “Mbube” – Zulu for “the lion”. The song became a major hit in England, selling more than 100,000 copies before 1948. Folklorist Alan Lomax introduced the song to Pete Seeger, who misheard “uyiMbube” (”he is a lion”) as “Wimoweh”. Mistranscription aside, Seeger tried to do the right thing, crediting Linda as the author of the song and sending him a check for $1000. Unfortunately, the other 150 people who recorded the song – most with lyrics written by George David Weiss – were not as generous, and Linda died almost penniless in 1962.

Lawyer Owen Dean, who is representing the Linda family, says that Solomon Linda sold the rights to a local firm, but that the ownership of the song should have reverted to his heirs 25 years after his death, or 1987. Mbube has generated over $15m in royalties, but less than $15,000 of that money has made it to the Linda family.

The South African court has agreed to hear the case and has awarded the attachement of 200 Disney trademarks registered in South Africa. If the Linda family wins the case, the trademarks could be sold to settle the claim. A victory would also open possible suits in other nations where British copyright laws would have applied.

Given Disney’s muscular defense of copyright term extension to protect its precious animated mouse, it will be interesting to see whether they do the right thing and promptly settle this claim. I’m not holding my breath… but I’m looking forward to watching.

Jim Moore has been writing passionately and skillfully about the conflict in Darfur, both on his blog and as part of the team behind Passion of the Present. His analysis today of Colin Powell’s ultimatum to the Khartoum government is right on target – if we believe the Sudanese government can stop the militias, and if we believe they’ll act quickly, rather than continuing to drag their heels, we’ve got a chance for peace in Sudan. If not, Powell may have backed down too quickly. I’m concerned that the latter is more likely. As Jim points out, the Sudanese government has been reluctant to even admit to their involvement in the crisis – I find it highly unlikely that they’ll move quickly to prevent further destruction without continuous outside pressure.

The Christian Science Monitor’s Abraham McLaughlin – who’s maintained an excellent blog on his time reporting from Africa – has an article analysing the Bush administration’s reasons for focusing on Sudan. He theorizes that a stable Sudan, readmitted into the “family of nations”, is a foreign policy victory for Bush’s team – a nation formerly associated with terrorism now rehabilitated by Bush’s aggresive foreign policy (like Libya.) Sudan is an issue where the administration can score points with the left and the right (while lefty organizations like MoveOn are mobilizing around Sudan, the real strength of the Sudan movement, historically, has been conservative Christians, concerned about persecution of Sudanese christians.) Finally, McLaughlin points out that Bush can hardly afford to leave himself open to accusations that he allowed a genocide to occur in Sudan on his watch during an election year. Here’s hoping these pressures will force the administration to keep pressure on Khartoum.

The Kampala Monitor is reporting that RwandaTel, Uganda Telecom and Telkom Kenya are discussing construction of a fiberoptic cable from Kigali to Mombassa, passing through Kampala and Nairobi enroute. Telkom Kenya has reportedly finalized plans to build a $5m USD link between Nairobi and Mombassa to accomodate traffic within the nation – the project includes funding for a line to Malaba, on the Ugandan border, to connect to Uganda’s telecommunications network.

The land-based cable is designed to connect to the EASSy cable currently under discussion. The East African Sub-Marine System cable is designed to pass from Djibouti to South Africa, where it will presumably interconnect with SAT-3/SAFE, completing a near-loop of coverage around the coast of the continent.

It’s exciting to see plans for East African land cables. The fact that Ugandan, Rwandan and Kenyan telecommunications providers see a need to interconnect implies that there’s a good deal of voice (and possibly data) traffic between these nations. This exchange of traffic is a precursor to increased commercial activities between these nations, a development that would likely strengthen all participants. (The fragmentation of African economies is considered by many economists one of the major reasons for Africa’s economic stagnation.)

There’s been a great deal of speculation in the Internet Exchange Point community over whether there’s a need for regional Internet exchanges – while east African cables don’t prove a need for data interconnectivity, it does demonstrate a likely market for voice interconnection, which will likely lead towards data interconnection.

What little I can learn about EASSy makes me distinctly uneasy. The project seems to be built on the same model as SAT-3 (South Africa Telkom 3, a 120 Gbit/sec cable that runs down the west coast of the continent, connecting several African nations to South Africa and Portugal.) SAT-3 is a closed consortium, owned by 30+ telecommunications companies (both African and American/European) – new telecommunications companies that want access to the cable have been forced to negotiate with existing consortium owners and are prohibited from building their own fiberoptic connections to the backbone. The result: SAT-3 is basically a cartel – it’s got control over a scarce resource and can charge what it wants for access to the resource. I would very much like to see consumer groups in East Africa organize to ensure that there’s more open access to EASSy than there has been to SAT-3, where numerous small business owners and competitive telephone companies have complained they’ve hard a hard time getting access.

President Kibaki’s anti-corruption drive in Kenya appears to be paying off. The World Bank just authorized $200m USD in loans and grants to support a variety of projects, including airport security, agriculture and sewage. The World Bank had pulled out of Kenya in the late 1990s citing concerns about corruption. Kenya’s president has taken a number of steps to combat corruption, including public trials of government officials accused of corruption and a raise in salaries for police officers to discourage them from taking bribes.