It’s not exactly a sexy issue - but intellectual property is an emerging topic of national importance. It may seem remote to you - but it could be as close as that remote control at your fingertips. We’re talking about cable television - and those 200 plus channels which you pay 45 dollars a month for.
It’s the cheapest, and dollar for dollar, best cable in the world - and - the be blunt - it’s made possible by mass copyright infringement - which doesn't pay for the intellectual property of the US based rights owners.
But that could great cable package could change soon - as it has in other Caribbean countries. Belize is now coming under the microscope for its rather loose intellectual property regime.
Earlier this week on the show “Know Your Rights” here on Channel 7, intellectual property specialist, Attorney Marissa Longsworth explained the peculiar situation of cable television in Belize:…
Host
"In an issue of cable television for instance we have so many channels. I know whenever people from abroad come here and they see. How are you getting that, how do you have HBO in your thing, you bought the package? Package? We don't know about that. How does that work?"
Marissa Longsworth - Attorney & IP Specialist
"This one is bit of a touchy issue but I will answer. The truth of the matter is that Belize is falling into the same category that a lot of Caribbean countries are falling into as it relates to cable and satellite infringement. So what our cable companies tend to do is to just to pick the satellite feed and then redistribute it amongst all of their subscribers. This is wrong because under intellectual property every use deserve its own compensation so you can't pay one time and then redistribute thousands of times without payment. Now cable operators and broadcasters are not 100% to blame this is an issue that has come up through -- it's become an international trade issue because the United States has actually sited Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad as infringing on the rights of their content creators particularly through one cable company. Belize is also sighted in some reports for not complying with copyright as it relates to signal piracy and so on. So the truth is we are not supposed to have these channels at the cost that we have them. In any other country in the world the expectation is that you pay for licenses from those programmers to use and distribute their content. So for example HBO being a premium channel that doesn't advertise makes it money from subscriber ship not from advertisements and so they depend on having subscriber ship through cable operators and so on that help to pay their bills so HBO will be one of the first ones here like they did in Jamaica, they were the first ones in Jamaica. Essentially what is going to happen is there will come a day when the crack happens in Belize, we've been under the radar but I don't know if many people know that our piracy issues date back to the 1980s, there are stories on the internet about us wanting to watch the Cubs, the Chicago Cubs and that was the introduction on piracy in Belize in the 1980s.”
You can see the full show repeat on Sunday on Channel 7.
Longsworth is advising the government on National Intellectual Property Rights Strategy and part of that deals with lessening copyright non-compliance in broadcast licensing. The US is pressing Belize and other developing nations to conform to global intellectual property standards.
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