An­na-Lisa Paul

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing book pub­lish­ers are threat­en­ing to sue the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, and even teach­ers, for re­pro­duc­ing school books dur­ing on­line learn­ing and to dis­trib­ute among learn­ing pack­ages to those with­out com­put­ers.

The lawyers have sent an­oth­er let­ter to the Min­istry, sim­i­lar to one sent on March 30, warn­ing of breach of copy­right.

The let­ter was sent on Sep­tem­ber 10 by the law firm de Ver­teuil-Milne As­so­ciates which acts on be­half of the Book In­dus­try Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (BIOTT) and the T&T Re­pro­graph­ic Rights Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TTR­RO).

The lat­est let­ter made ref­er­ence to the one sent in March.

“In our said let­ter we drew the Min­istry’s at­ten­tion to the fact that school text­books and oth­er lit­er­ary works are pro­tect­ed un­der copy­right and, where ap­plic­a­ble, un­der trade­mark law and that copy­right is a prop­er­ty in­ter­est.”

It con­tin­ued, “This means that the copy­right own­er has the ex­clu­sive right to un­der­take, and au­tho­rise oth­ers to un­der­take a num­ber of ac­tiv­i­ties in re­la­tion to his work in­clud­ing copy­ing, adapt­ing or oth­er­wise trans­form­ing school text­books and oth­er lit­er­ary works.”

“It is, there­fore, il­le­gal to do so un­less per­mis­sion is ob­tained from each in­di­vid­ual copy­right hold­er or, where ap­pro­pri­ate, through a li­cense with TTR­RO. To be clear, copy­ing school text­books and oth­er lit­er­ary works means re­pro­duc­ing them in any ma­te­r­i­al form.”

The let­ter ex­plained that this in­clud­ed stor­ing them in any medi­um by elec­tron­ic means, such as on the mem­o­ry of a com­put­er; up­load­ing ma­te­r­i­al from dig­i­tal stor­age de­vices on to a com­mu­ni­ty on­line; and down­load­ing dig­i­tal trans­mis­sions from dig­i­tal net­works like the In­ter­net.

The firm not­ed that breach of copy­right can re­sult in a fine of $250,000 and ten years im­pris­on­ment and added, “In cer­tain cir­cum­stances, a prin­ci­pal, teacher, IT pro­fes­sion­al or any oth­er per­son in­volved or im­plic­it in the of­fence could be held per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble.”

In ref­er­ence to the guide­lines is­sued by the Min­istry for this school term, the law firm not­ed that teach­ers are ex­pect­ed to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de­liv­ery of the cur­ricu­lum via re­mote meth­ods which in­clude the pro­duc­tion of learn­ing ma­te­ri­als and the pro­vi­sion of print­ed learn­ing ma­te­ri­als to schools.

They ar­gued, “This is not the case here where our client has avail­able and has of­fered a col­lec­tive li­cense to the Min­istry as well as teach­ing in­sti­tu­tions. Please un­der­stand that The Min­istry is not ex­empt from copy­right in­fringe­ment and it is not em­pow­ered to au­tho­rise the un­law­ful use or re­pro­duc­tion of pub­lished works.”

“In the cir­cum­stances, we urge you, for the pro­tec­tion of your or­gan­i­sa­tion and any and all teach­ers un­der your purview, to en­sure that no ma­te­r­i­al is print­ed, dis­trib­uted or up­loaded or in any oth­er man­ner dis­sem­i­nat­ed with­out the ap­pro­pri­ate li­cense so as to amount to copy­right in­fringe­ment.”

The law firm said that while it recog­nised the ex­tra­or­di­nary sit­u­a­tion brought about by COVID-19, “the mere fact that stu­dents no longer need to go in­to a store and phys­i­cal­ly pur­chase books, does not mean that the au­thors and pub­lish­ers of those very books ought to be de­prived of the in­come from their works.”