7 News Belize

Whose Property Is That Song You Downloaded?
posted (October 17, 2013)

We caught up with Elrington at a two-day national workshop on Copyright and Intellectual Property rights.  Now these rights go largely ignored in Belize, but in fact, every published work, every trademark, every song, every usable idea that you document is protected under these laws.   That’s why today was an awareness session where we found out more about these rarely invoked rights:..

Candace Westby Fisher, Deputy Registrar - BELIPO
"The purpose of this workshop is to sensitize persons like yourself and the Belizean public as to copyright and the importance of it. It’s more than a song, it’s more than music. It affects everybody, it affects the users, the libraries, the archives - everyone and we are hoping that through this workshop we can provide you with answers as to what is copyright and why do I need to know about it and how will it help me."

Lydia Rose, GM, Jamaica Association of Composers, Authors and Publishes (JACAP)
"When a music is played or images is created and it is used then the owner is and should get payment for that creativity. In a restaurant, in a bar, a public event whether it’s for free or it is charge, once you used the creativity of someone else then that person should get something, some sort of remuneration."

Felene Swazo, Belize Copyright Agency
"I'll give you my personal example, I am a poet, I self-publish a collection of poetry and, let’s just say that someone approached me and said 'oh my goodness, I am so glad to meet you, I am a big fan.' Here this person had gotten a copy of the book from a friend and the photocopy all of the pages of the book and they came to me and told me that they photocopied the whole book because they wanted a copy. They did not see any problem in telling me that they photocopied my entire book and so I lost money in a sense because they got a free copy of the book or they did not pay me for the copy of the book. They paid the photocopy shop that they got it from."

"People have to aware of what they are doing is wrong and also have that empathy for the persons who have created it to say this person also has to eat."

Candace Westby Fisher
"It affects your daily lives all across the board when you download a song; you are affecting the rights of the copyright holder. If you take a book from the library and you photocopy half of the book - you are infringing on the rights of the copyright holder."

"Copyright extends to everybody, we all use it."

Jules Vasquez
"You know, we have fake brands; fake Nike's, we've seen that recently. There are so many encounters we have every day with non-sanctioned material. It is really any hope to say regularize it, let’s fix this."

Candace Westby Fisher
"There is. The law provides for enforcement of copyright and all intellectual property rights and there are provisions in the legislation that allows for the Customs to carry out the seizures like the Nike that they found the other day. There are provisions - criminal offences. There are civil remedies and we hope that through education and making all these sectors aware of what it is and what is your role in intellectual property that we can regularize it."

Carol Newman, JAMCOPY - JFRO
"In the case of Jamaica a study was done by WIPO and that establish that copyright industries contributed 4.8% to our GDP. That was almost the same as agriculture contributed to our GDP. You all know how much government spends on agriculture and not even a percent of that is spent on copyright industries. You can imagine what would happen if some more incentives were put into the copyright industries."

Jules Vasquez
"Is it increasingly hard to enforce and protect these rights in the information age where everything is downloadable/available?"

Carol Newman
"It makes the job more difficult in one hand but it also helps in terms of the education because you are able to reach more persons and quickly and then you are able to spread the word more to say listen, copyright is important, its not only about the person who produces the work but its also about a national program of development; cultural and social development."

Hon. Wilfred Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"The easy access to information via computer even via telephone could run you afoul of the law when in fact you access information that is protected by copyright. When you do that, you can be subjected to both criminal and civil proceedings."

The two day national workshop is sponsored by the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva. 

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