The greatest piracy on earth

The spectacle might provide benefits to literally thousands of businesses — large and small, ranging from Queen’s Park Savannah vendors to four and five star hotels, but it also takes money out of pockets of our artists.

From the skilled to the unskilled workers; from wayside vendors to the caterers at the recently opened rebuilt Breakfast Shed at Wrightson Road, to record producers to service stations all will benefit in a classic turning around of money within the economy.

Beneath all the fun and merriment there is the serious side to Carnival : that of profiting from the two-day "Greatest Show on Earth". Some do it legitimately, others, like the pirates, do not.

For all of its traditional appeal to visitors and residents alike, it would be shortsighted to turn a blind eye to this wave of piracy.

Although our Carnival has attracted a growing market of overseas visitors, it has also spawned several other Carnivals both within the region, North America and the United Kingdom.

In turn, several of these offshoots of our Carnivals have sought to build up an appeal and clientele over the years in an effort to challenge and chip away at our tourist market.

Meanwhile, composers and recording artistes who expect to optimise profits in the run-up to and during Carnival have within recent years suffered a continuous loss of profits from piracy, both DVD and CDs.

Without authorisation, these pirates copy their music and their songs within days of them being recorded. As a result, recording artistes and studios have lost millions of dollars in potential revenue.

One singer, Bunji Garlin, said last week that he chose to release his songs closer to Carnival to try and beat the pirates. Machel Montano has to release a song a week to keep these bootleggers at bay. This is an intolerable minus in an otherwise minefield of pluses.

In the last few days, we have witnessed the police making raids on pirates, confiscating their illegal CDs that sooner or later will find their way into someone’s home or car.

It’s an ugly cycle. We knowingly legitimise the act of piracy when we purchase these CDs — cutting the artiste out of the profits. It’s hard to understand why hundreds of us would pay to go to these fetes but not support the purchase of original CDs.

We hope that the police swoop down last Sunday on Independence Square is not a shot in the dark but an attempt to snuff out the problem, once and for all.