You might have noticed that during the past couple of weeks, a book titled “How to Build A Multi-Billion Dollars Business: Breaking Through Africa Challenging Economies” started circulating on social media especially WhatsApp. The book claims to have been authored by Strive Masiyiwa but he denied it in August 2016 when the book originally surfaced.
Even though the book contains many insights from Strive and would be a good read, it is not as great of a thing to compile such a book especially for the person who did it. Firstly, it violates Facebook’s copyright laws which govern the use of content that is posted on Facebook and specifies that no-one post content that someone else created and claim it to be theirs.
Yes, this person doesn’t claim to have written the book, however, they did not get permission from the original content creator so they still can’t use it elsewhere. In his 2016 response to this, Mr. Masiyiwa urges his fans not to buy this book as it was originally found on Amazon for sale. This was because all the content was available on Facebook for free from Mr. Masiyiwa’s page.
Now that it is back in circulation and even for free, it might not seem like it’s doing any harm but it really is in an indirect way. So when someone redistributes all of the content as of today that Strive has posted, then the fans who used to go on Facebook, read his older posts and like them end up not seeing the point to do that.
That’s a big cost for Strive. He’s just lost engagement with people who are interested in what he thinks. If something is important in this day and age for any brand, it is someone’s attention. With all these people consuming the content elsewhere, it’s a potential free advertisement loss for any new things that he might want to announce as there will be no-one staying up to date with him on Facebook.
Besides that, the book could potentially misrepresent what he thinks could have been in the contents of a book with the same title. Given how it’s already out and probably in some of your hands, better read it and get some inspiration but don’t do what this person did else you might end up facing serious legal action.
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8 comments
Rufaro, could you please invest more time in doing a grammar and spell-check on your articles before posting them or get someone to proof-read first. Spelling mistakes can be forgiven but grammatical and context errors put other people off. The impression is created of a rushed job, not good.
Hi, thanks for the feedback, will work on it.
Grammerly ndeye mahala
Firstly, you have grossly misunderstood the copyright policy of Facebook. You may not post another persons content on Facebook and claim it as yours. The book is not a Facebook post, even if it was, they are neither claiming it to be theirs. Aside from that, that act of posting something on Facebook doesn’t make it copyrighted, one may argue that it becomes public domain unless explicitly marked by copyright.
In terms of cost to Strive, I would call your claim that he has lost engagement sheer speculation. On the contrary, and speculative too, Strive may actually gain followers from people who read the book and weren’t already following him. Lost of engagement presumes one was going to find and follow Strive on their own, absent this book. You can’t lose a follower you didn’t have.
Thanks for the feed
Honestly i think sometimes people just shade hate on Strive Masiyiwa, i do not think he is the kind of person who would commit intellectual theft.
You need to read again. It is not Strive who is being accused of intellectual theft, but the party that collected and published his posts as a book.
On the research part… There is a person who posted kuti can he compile all the posts into one item and he said yes but not for sale…. Zvekuti lost engagement wat not I disagree how many times does one have to alter that book just to add new posts….. information being given out for free based on his experiences in the business world within and outside Africa……. hameno itwo cents dzako ndangoti nditaurewo two cents dzanguwo