Home News “It’s a huge undertaking that has to happen” – Culture Minister...
Recognising that strong copyright legislation is needed to support the work of local creatives, Minister Ramson said that an in-depth analysis is needed before copyright laws are amended.
He, at the time, was replying to a reporter from this news publication who pointed out what implementations are going to be provided for musical artistes this year in light of the Jackie Jaxx situation, which grew very popular in September of 2024.
In September of 2024 Jackie Hanover, popularly known as Jackie Jaxx, and Ivan Harry who performs as D’Ivan, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States (US), against One Communications (Guyana) Inc. and Tennicia De Freitas, known by her stage name NEKEITA, for the unauthorised use of their musical compositions “Guyana” and “Oh Guyana” during a rebranding of the telecommunications giant.
The lawsuit alleges that One Communications and NEKEITA infringed the plaintiffs’ copyrights by performing, broadcasting, and commercially exploiting the songs without obtaining the necessary permissions.
Hanover and Harry are contending that One Communications, in particular, gained significant economic benefits by infringing their copyright protection.
According to the Minister, there needs to be a deepened study of the legislation before it is done due to the complexities of how the music is made popular in the first place.
“And also, the analysis has to be very clear too because all of these musicians that make music, when they write their music—part of their joy is to see other people singing their songs. And when they go on a stage and sing their song, and they sing a hook, and they turn their mic to the crowd and the crowd sings it—how did it get popular in the first place? It gets popular because the radio station plays it. So we’ve been, engaging the radio station to play it; we’ve been incentivizing them to do that.”
He also added another reasoning for this in-depth analysis which is the type of music market Guyana has.
“But I think it’s something for us to study very carefully because of our market. It’s a small consumer-based market. The radio stations themselves are not multibillion dollar and they don’t have record labels.”
Additionally, he said that he is not sure if the Ministry can currently undertake it to fully go into the process of assuring amendments are made due to the fact that the Youth Sport and Culture Ministry is currently undergoing much work as it pertains to Mashramani, among other projects.
“It’s a huge undertaking that has to happen. I can’t say that I can make that undertaking now because, you know, it is a busy year for us. We don’t even have the full year.”
He added, “What people want copyright protection for—and it already exists—is how they are going to make more money. And the whole point of that is that every time a song is played on any radio station, they are supposed to pay a small sum, but the problem is, if your song is not being played on the radio, it never gets popular. And if it never gets popular, the demand is not there for the song to be played. So, it’s something that is very interesting for us to look at very carefully,” Ramson stated,
In September of 2024, Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo said that there should be a review of the legislation due to him believing that the country is moving into a more modernized era.
Meanwhile, National Events Coordinator Andrew Tyndall revealed that steps have been taken by the Ministry’s National School of Music, which would have introduced this semester a course on the business of music. This is geared for persons who are in the music industry, including the artistes. So, once they register for the course, they would have the knowledge to navigate that.
