Raphael John-Lall

Chair­man of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT), Sel­by Wil­son, has warned that the num­ber of peo­ple in T&T af­fect­ed by in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty vi­o­la­tions will con­tin­ue to grow if that il­le­gal prac­tice con­tin­ues unchecked.Wil­son told the TATT's 13th ICT Open Fo­rum on Wednes­day that pira­cy not on­ly af­fects big busi­ness­es but peo­ple from all walks of life."A com­mon mis­con­cep­tion is that op­ti­cal disc pira­cy, that is the pira­cy of CDs, DVDs and CD-ROMs, the use of il­le­gal soft­ware pro­grammes and even ca­ble tele­vi­sion pira­cy, on­ly af­fect ma­jor con­glom­er­ates in large coun­tries. The truth is that these acts al­so vic­timise many lo­cal artistes and con­sumers in our even small­er mar­kets cre­at­ing a cadre of vic­tims that will con­tin­ue to grow each year if in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty vi­o­la­tions are al­lowed to con­tin­ue unchecked," he said.

"In­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights are a crit­i­cal as­pect of such an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment. T&T has a mod­ern frame­work for in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights con­sis­tent with its oblig­a­tions un­der var­i­ous in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments, most no­tably those pur­suant to its mem­ber­ship in the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WTO). "In­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights af­fect every as­pect of the life of every cit­i­zen as these rights are at­tached to the var­i­ous forms of in­for­ma­tion which we in­ter­act. In­clud­ed among these are var­i­ous forms of lit­er­ary and artis­tic prod­ucts which maybe pro­tect­ed by copy­rights," Wil­son said.

He said ef­fec­tive reg­u­la­tion of the broad­cast sec­tor is im­por­tant."Many of these lit­er­ary and artis­tic prod­ucts are re­ceived via the broad­cast me­dia. The broad­cast sec­tor is one of the in­dus­tries con­sid­ered part of the core of the copy­right en­abled econ­o­my. This is so be­cause the act of com­mer­cial broad­cast­ing pri­mar­i­ly con­cerns the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of au­dio vi­su­al con­tent to the pub­lic which are in al­most all in­stances pro­tect­ed by some form of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty," he said.

Wil­son said com­pli­ance has im­proved over the years."Be­fore the lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing sec­tor, which cul­mi­nat­ed in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, pira­cy, in par­tic­u­lar for ca­ble tele­vi­sion, was a ma­jor prob­lem in T&T. How­ev­er the mar­ket has come a long way since that time," he said.