Dear Editor,
For some time now I have been visiting lots of bookstores, also in the markets, buying books and published material for my children and myself.
I note with a great deal of interest that most books today selling in our markets and bookstores are photocopied books; that’s a violation of copyright laws both nationally and internationally.
I observed that books such as: Junior English, First Aid in English, CXC text books in every subject area, books by Caribbean writers like VS Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Ian McDonald, Martin Carter, Wilson Harris and the long list goes on and on when it comes to ‘book piracy’ and our past and present government have Sdone nothing about it.
I am scared to bring my books that were published abroad and launch them here because my first book published here was pirated by many schools and storeowners and it’s hard to track down everyone and if you take them to court you can lose your case because the copyright laws are not enforced here.
What is really happening to the laws of our country? On every corner we can see laws are broken every day by corrupt people in our society. What is copyright? Does it apply to our country?
“Copyright is a type of protection provided by law to authors of original works of authorship, inclusive of literary, drama, musical, artistic and some other intellectual works.’’
Guyana is a signatory to the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention. In addition, other copyright legal provisions are enacted in the Copyright Act 1956 of the United Kingdom to which Guyana acceded in 1966.
The problem, however, is that these copyright provisions are not enforced in Guyana. Guyana is among 121 countries that were party to the Berne Convention on March 2, 1997. Since Guyana is a signatory of the Berne Convention, why is it not being enforced?
Why is Guyana a signatory of a convention she has no intention to implement? It’s about time our law makers try to have an understanding of copyright laws to protect our authors, singers, etc.
This law must be passed in Parliament and all pirated photocopy books, exam papers, DVDs, CDs must be removed from the shelves in every store and market stall in Guyana.
Our writers here suffer a lot, like myself, because we only have four newspapers, which makes it hard to employ our writers to get jobs. Even many agencies hardly have job positions for writers and editors. I say this from my personal experience and most papers pay columnists very cheap or don’t want to pay them because many politicians write columns here for free, making it very difficult for our Guyanese writers like myself.
Why are copyright laws not enforced after fifty years of Independence? We have copyright laws in Guyana but they are not enforced. If they were enforced, then the owners of these stores selling photocopy books would have been picked up by the police, they would have been sent to prison or pay some heavy court fines like in Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados and many big nations.
I also see the piracy of CDs and DVDs has now become a normal business in this country from the very big store owners to sellers in the streets.
Many young children are dropping out of schools just to earn a living by selling pirated DVDs and CDs.
It’s very sad to know that writers’ text books or any other books of poetry, fiction, etc are being pirated and sold in the streets and in the stores and the writer cannot do anything about it. It’s sad to know because the writer will take years to write a book and will invest a huge sum of money to get his/her book published.
It’s very sad to know that many of our Guyanese singers will take years to compose their songs on a CD, travel out of Guyana to get their songs recorded then suddenly their CD is being sold in the streets and CD shops for 0 and seven for 0.
Since we are a member of Caricom then we must follow and adhere to the principles of other Caricom States. It looks bad when a Caribbean writer visit our country to see his/her book being sold as a photocopy book.
What we need in Guyana is a publishing house or a good printing press at the Ministry of Education to re-publish books written by Caribbean author’s that will be easily available to students at a reduced price. In an interview some time ago with Hansib Publisher Arif Ali and Petamber Persaud about copyright, Ali said that he can publish text books cheaper for Guyana if our government can work with him. Even singer Dave Martins said that copyright laws must be enforced in Guyana, because it will put more revenue into the government’s treasury.
What we need in Guyana is a writers/authors union where writers are represented, meaning they can take a storeowner to court for selling their books and that storeowner will have to compensate the writer financially if found guilty. The same should apply for artistes.
This looks like a long hard road for us to travel, but it can be done if we work together to enforce the copyright laws in our country.
Yours faithfully,
Rev Gideon Cecil
