Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE: Modern Caribbean Pirates Treasure Music

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Feb 17 2004 (IPS) - For the first time in nearly two decades, calypso singer David Rudder did not release an album for this year’s Carnival celebrations here.

It is not that the Canadian-based Trinidad-born performer has no material to record. But he has joined a number of Caribbean artists who are finding it difficult to beat the music pirates at their game and as a result, are shying away from recording studios.

Rudder and his Trinidadian colleagues are not alone.

Last week, the Music/Video Producers and Retailers of Barbados (MVPRB) threatened that no new local music would be sold or released until authorities acted to protect their work.

MVPRB executive member Peter Boyce said artists had suffered “tremendous loss of revenue” from piracy, the unauthorised duplication and selling of copyrighted music or other intellectual property.

“We are here to inform that there will be no new music released or sold until meaningful action is taken by the relevant authorities for the protection of copyright,” he added at a news conference.

Local music-makers complain that they are unable to sell an average of 300 CDs at local stores, a figure that they consider to signify a hit.

Boyce suggested government should make it a crime to re-package, re-label or reproduce and try to sell or rent – without the written permission of the copyright holders – any music or audio-visual material in any format.

Rudder, a former winner of the Calypso Monarch at Trinidad’s Carnival who has recorded more than 25 albums, calls the issue “very frustrating”. Music pirates are using the latest computer technology to “burn” (copy) recordings even before artists have a chance to sell them in stores, he adds.

“I remember back in the ’80s everyone used to tell you, ‘well I have it on tape’. Then kind of early in the ’90s everyone used to say, ‘well, I will get somebody to burn it for me’.”

“Now the language has changed (with people saying) ‘well I done download that already’ – and I don’t know how they will stop that,” Rudder said in a telephone conference call from his home in Canada.

Last month, Roger Stone, 45, from Central Trinidad, pleaded guilty in a magistrate’s court to breaching the copyright law after he was arrested with some 10,000 CDs and more than 83,000 U.S. dollars worth of duplicating equipment.

The chief executive officer of the Copyright Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago (COTT), Allison Demas, described the haul as the biggest incident of music piracy ever in the Caribbean region.

“Even we were astonished at the quantity of unlawful CDs culled from this one location,” says Demas, adding, “which kind of implies that it is a manufacturing plant rather than the business of a sole trader or small-time operation”.

COTT has launched a number of initiatives geared towards sensitising the public about the dangers of piracy, and although Demas says, “it is not a losing war”, many stakeholders do not share that optimism.

In November last year, two independent producers announced they would pay 83 dollars to anyone reporting unauthorised duplication or sale of their music.

A pirated CD here costs about 10 dollars or less on the street, while a store-bought one will sell for 20-30 dollars.

Piracy is a booming global industry, worth close to five billion dollars annually.

The world’s largest recording labels have recently tried a two-pronged approach to stop piracy via the Internet. On one hand they are offering some music to download at reduced rates.

But on the other hand the industry is suing members of the public who download and share songs on the Internet without paying. The Canadian Recording Industry Association was to launch a billion-dollar action against 29 listeners on Monday.

Estimates of the value of the illegal industry in the Caribbean are imprecise, but it is believed to be worth millions of dollars annually -15 million dollars estimates the Trinidad and Tobago government’s copyright office (COTT).

Last September the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a grouping of mostly U.S. industry organisations, said that many Caribbean and Central American nations were failing to uphold their existing copyright laws.

“Over the last two years in particular, the unauthorised ‘burning’ of CDs has grown rapidly throughout Latin American and the Caribbean, thus challenging the ability of legitimate businesses engaged in the creation and distribution of copyright materials,” it added in a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative.

COTT itself nets over one million dollars annually in copyright fees. Of this, close to two-thirds leaves the country to pay foreign artists. But more than one-third of Caribbean artists do not belong to a copyright society.

To correct this, in 2000 COTT reduced its entry requirement from three commercially recorded songs to one tune, resulting in a 30 per cent increase in membership that year.

Making the copyright bodies’ work more difficult is the fact that the piracy network includes people in the bona fide music industry, deejays, computer suppliers and a highly organised cadre of distributors.

Boyce suggested giving police and the courts authority to seize all equipment used in acts of music piracy, and that a conviction should result in a fine of 5,000 dollars or a year in jail.

The region’s most prolific producers of music, in Jamaica, have convinced police to become more involved. Industry officials report that an organised crime investigation unit in the birthplace of reggae has clamped down on open street vending of pirated music.

Demas thinks that success means that the problem can be efficiently dealt with elsewhere in the region.

At a meeting in Tobago earlier this month, the Caribbean Copyright Link (CCL) – which brings together agencies in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados and St Lucia – looked at enhanced police activities, among a variety of possible approaches.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has launched a Music Industry Development (CARMID) project that focuses on copyrights, to ensure the industry has strong legal and institutional frameworks to fight piracy.

Draft copyright legislation has been prepared and is being implemented in the region so that countries are prepared to enter into various global copyright conventions.

Since 1997, the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has led an effort to develop a process to collectively manage copyrights in the region via a database system.

This approach would put the onus on national governments to uphold copyrights.