TTCO versus COTT

An explanation of what a CMO is might be in order to understand the quarrel.

CMOs, according to the World Intellectual Property Office, are based on the principle that copyright holders are not able to approach every single person or entity using their material, or intellectual property, and therefore, a body is needed to do this on their behalf.

COTT and TTCO are CMOs, which collect royalties on behalf of their clients for different intellectual property rights. This is at the heart of the contention between the two.

COTT collects largely on behalf of artistes and for musical works. The TTCO, however, collects on behalf of all those associated with the artistes’ work, such as writers and producers, for example. These rights are called neighbouring rights.

Muddying the issue is the fact that several artistes are also entitled to neighbouring rights compensation since they often write and produce their own music.

“The law recognises more than one type of right,” said Brian Cornwall, TTCO’s vice president and Chief Executive Officer at a media conference on Tuesday, “it is not just the artiste that has to be paid for his work.” How they are paid is through licensing.

An artiste is supposed to be paid for his song through a license anytime it is broadcast, performed publicly or otherwise distributed to the public. To illustrate, a fete promoter purchases a license from the body representing the musical work in order for it to be played at his event.

Neighbouring rights are based on the idea that several persons would have assisted the artiste in creating said musical work and those people have to be paid as well.

TTCO is accusing COTT of attempting to strong arm them and the people they represent out of business by colluding with popular promoters to prevent monies owed to their clients from being paid.

The TTCO panel at the conference, including, President, Dr Vijay Ramlal Rai, Dion Heath, intellectual property attorneys, Akilah Phillips and Temilola Ade John and neighbouring rights consultant, Fabien Alfonso said COTT has been giving the promoters and the public the impression that they are the only institution mandated by government to collect licensing fees and that it is not necessary to seek other licenses.

A release published on COTT’s website on the same day as the TTCO conference said: “COTT notes that promoters have been approached by another CMO stating that it has the authority to represent neighbouring rights to cover the public performance of sound recordings. Again, COTT encourages promoters to seek confirmation that the owners of the relevant sound recordings are indeed members of any CMO claiming representation.

COTT confirms that its DJ License covers performances of musical works by DJs at places not normally covered by a COTT blanket license and/or another COTT tariff. The DJ License has existed for decades locally and pre-dates the formation of COTT.” TTCO told media that the method through this ‘confirmation’ of its membership that its clients are discriminated against. They said whenever they provide promoters with it, it has been used to “blacklist” performers, producers and writers represented by the TTCO.

Heath estimated the loss of earnings to a music producer who is having a good season and represented by TTCO, is well into the hundreds of thousands, or millions over a lifetime.

Those on the panel also could not understand why COTT wanted to be the only CMO operating in this market, since in most jurisdictions, multiple CMOs existed and licensing needed to be sought from all.

Business Day research confirmed this to be true.

In the vein of our previous pieces on Carnival, some more questions need to be asked and some more observations made.

The first is that this situation continues a trend of divisiveness and turf marking that has come to characterize agencies administering important aspects of carnival.

The ultimate result is costly, not only in terms of financial resources, but in time wasted.

Why does COTT have to be the only CMO effectively operating in this market? The current copyright legislation seems to be one of the underlying problems in that it is not sufficiently clear in defining several intellectual property rights. Is there any way this can be fixed? As the TTCO noted during its conference, several promoters operate internationally and have no problem paying multiple CMOs in foreign jurisdictions.

Why not here? Veteran calypsonian Crazy (Edwin Ayoung) was at the conference and he made an allegation that COTT had only paid him $300 in royalties over the course of his decades long career, something that is hard to believe, as Crazy’s soca parang has come to define Christmas music in TT.

It would be interesting to get a sense from the artistes themselves, how they feel about COTT’s representation of their interests, or the TTCO’s representation for that matter.

Why does so little money end up in the hands of the people who create the works, even though everyone professes to care about their rights and interests? Heath also quoted an estimate from yet another paper, this one done by Dr Vanus James, that there were billions to be made from Carnival, a proportion of this from the proper security of intellectual property rights.

It is money that will never be realized if organization like TTCO and COTT cannot move beyond the bacchanal that titillates and entertains us, but ultimately does not move us forward.