Call for review of Copyright Act

REVIEW the Copyright Act and adopt a willing attitude to stop piracy, were among suggestions made yesterday to Legal Affairs Minister Danny Montano, when he met with representatives of several interest groups on intellectual property (IP) issues. The meeting took place at the Minister’s South Quay office. Kenny Phillips, a director at the Copyright Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (COTT) and president of the Recording Industry Association of Trinidad and Tobago (RIATT), told the meeting that six years after meeting with former Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj to “fix things” in the Copyright Act, the problems still existed. He called for the Act to be reviewed to make it less complicated to prosecute persons charged with piracy. Phillips said the Act was “ambiguous and unnecessarily complicated and it is affecting the industry.”

He noted that in the recent raid in Central where a man was arrested and charged with allegedly having thousands of pirated CDS, the police under the Act are required to make a note of every single song on every CD as part of the prosecution. He said not only was it tedious but it was a deterrent to police officers to arrest and confiscate pirated music tapes and CDS. He lamented that the system needed to be simple. Phillips also said that it was “disrespectful to musicians” to hear their music on the streets being played by travelling music boxes, more so, when the songs are not yet released to the radio stations or music shops. Phillips said calypsonian Shadow had such an experience this year. He said an effort must be made to stop such situations. He was critical too of the percentage of local music played on radio stations outside the Carnival period, pointing out that after Carnival it was as though we in TT had “moved on to being the 53rd State (as part of the US).”

Supporting him in calling for a review of the Act was Pan Trinbago’s secretary Richard Forteau, who requested that Government pass laws to make it mandatory that radio stations play a specific percentage of local music. Forteau said steelbands currently did not receive royalties when their music is played. He argued that “we must get brave. If we talking 20/20 we need to split the thing 50/50.” He further asked that the national instrument, the steelpan, be declared a national treasure. Brien de Ganges of J D Sellier and Co said people were getting away too easily with infringements on the Act and insisted that it was not difficult to stop piracy, “if there is a will.” He asked that the IP office be given more staff and technology to do its work. Montano, in promising to work with the stakeholders to address some of the issue raised, assured that the Copyright Act would be looked at. However he said it was unlikely that Government would regulate the percentage of local music played on the airwaves. He invited the participants and their organisatons to develop a close personal relationship with him. He said that an “open door” policy would be adopted, “just pick up the phone and ask to see me.”