PART ONE: PROTECTION OF COPYRIGHT
TITLE I: GENERAL PROVISIONS AND PROTECTED WORKS
CHAPTER I: GENERAL PROVISIONS
Article 1: Definitions
The following terms and their variant forms, as used in this Act, shall mean the following:
(a) “performers” means actors, singers, musicians, dancers and other persons who deliver, sing,
recite, declaim, play in or perform in any other way literary or artistic works;
(b) “competent authority” means one or several bodies, of which each one comprises one or several
persons appointed by the Government to exercise the powers attributed to them by the provisions
of this Act whenever any matter must be settled by such an authority;
(c) “communication to the public” means the transmission by wire or wireless means of the image,
the sound, or the image and sound, of a work, a performance or a phonogram in such a way that the
image, the sound, or the image and sound, may be perceived by persons outside the normal circle of
a family and its closest social acquaintances at a place or places so distant from the place where the
transmission originates that, without the transmission, the image or sound would not be perceivable
in that or those places, irrespective of whether the persons can receive the image or sound at the
same place and time, or at different places or times decided by them individually;
(d) “copy of a phonogram” means any physical medium containing sounds taken directly or
indirectly from a phonogram and incorporating all or a substantial part of the sounds fixed thereon;
(e) “distribution to the public” means offering copies of a work to the public or any section thereof,
mainly through appropriate commercial channels;
(f) “disclosure” means any act though which a work is first made accessible to the public;
(g) “broadcasting” means the transmission by wireless means for public reception of sounds or of
images and sounds;
(h) “expressions of folklore” means productions of characteristic elements of the traditional artistic
heritage developed and perpetuated in Burundi by a community or by individuals recognized as
meeting the traditional artistic expectations of such a community and includes:
‐ folk tales, folk poetry and riddles
‐ folk songs and instrumental music
‐ folk dancing and entertainment
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