An­na-Lisa Paul

In an at­tempt to in­tro­duce stricter con­trol mech­a­nisms with­in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor, the Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to join with re­gion­al coun­ter­parts to har­ness the growth of the sec­tor which con­tin­ues to grow ex­po­nen­tial­ly in which not all the play­ers are al­ways on the same page.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Max­ie Cuffie, the theme of Broad­cast­ing Li­cens­ing in the Dig­i­tal Age is para­dox­i­cal in na­ture as it is one which has seen the con­cept of free-to-air "be­ing in­creas­ing­ly re­placed by the free-for-all that cur­rent­ly ob­tains in cy­ber space."

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the open­ing of a two-day work­shop at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) yes­ter­day, Cuffie said the sit­u­a­tion that cur­rent­ly ob­tained had placed reg­u­la­tors at a dis­tinct dis­ad­van­tage as they sought to bring "san­i­ty and method to the lev­els of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that abound in the sec­tor."

He said that was fur­ther com­pound­ed by so­ci­ety which had a rich and long his­to­ry of un­bri­dled speech.

Cuffie said the dig­i­tal age had been re­spon­si­ble for ir­repara­bly dam­ag­ing the lives of in­no­cent cit­i­zens as per­sons with the abil­i­ty to broad­cast ma­te­r­i­al that was sex­u­al­ly ex­plic­it, com­pro­mis­ing or con­tain­ing un­truths, through the sim­ple act of push­ing a but­ton on a smart de­vice.

Cit­ing the re­cent case in which a young at­tor­ney was wrong­ly iden­ti­fied as the com­plainant in the al­leged rape case in­volv­ing pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion Wat­son Duke, Cuffie asked: "How does she re­cov­er from that un­war­rant­ed ex­pose on her oth­er­wise ap­par­ent­ly shel­tered life?"

He said while that was on­ly a side of the coin, there was al­so the re­verse po­si­tion of "ab­solute lax­i­ty, where oth­ers be­lieve that reg­u­la­tors like TATT should be so strin­gent in their ap­pli­ca­tion and en­force­ment of all broad­cast laws, that the slight­est of in­frac­tions should re­sult in the im­me­di­ate re­vo­ca­tion of li­cences or the im­po­si­tion of hefty fines."

Cel­e­brat­ing the re­moval of T&T from the US Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive watch list, Cuffie said the 2016 Spe­cial 301 Re­port clear­ly at­trib­uted that de­vel­op­ment to the work done by TATT.

Quot­ing from the re­port, Cuffie said TATT had tak­en con­crete steps to en­force its con­ces­sion agree­ments which re­quired broad­cast­ers to re­spect in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights by ac­quir­ing per­mis­sion from the own­ers of the ma­te­r­i­al pri­or to it be­ing broad­cast.

The min­is­ter said af­ter lis­ten­ing to ar­gu­ments from both sides, there had to be bal­ance as he ac­knowl­edged that the at­ten­tion paid to reg­u­lat­ing on­line con­tent was "dis­pro­por­tion­ate" to that paid to the con­tent of news­pa­pers and the pub­lish­ing sec­tor.

He added: "The idea seems to be that all reg­u­la­tion and any state in­ter­ven­tion are un­de­sir­able and seen as a threat to and vi­o­la­tion of press free­doms and that cit­i­zens should be able to freely de­cide for them­selves which con­tent in news­pa­pers and books they con­sume.

"The hands off ap­proach for print me­dia stands in sharp con­trast to the reg­u­la­to­ry bur­den on broad­cast­ing."

He said it was now a ques­tion of how far the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties should go with broad­cast­ing li­cens­ing or if it was too late as the prover­bial horse of free broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty, cloud com­put­ing, in­stant mes­sag­ing and ex­pen­sive mo­bile pen­e­tra­tion, had al­ready bolt­ed.

Cuffie said while broad­cast­ing was cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing its biggest pe­ri­od of change since the ar­rival of tele­vi­sion, he added T&T was tee­ter­ing on the cusp of an in­for­ma­tion age in which all tech­nolo­gies were con­verg­ing in­to one mar­ket.

Par­tic­i­pants in­clud­ed of­fi­cials from or­gan­i­sa­tions, such as the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice; TATT; the Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Union; Cari­com and the World In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Or­gan­i­sa­tion.