Jamaican intellectual property rights also being breached abroad - Gary Allen

Gary Allen, Managing Director of the RJR Communications Group, has asserted that local media content providers trying to enter foreign markets often face the same breaches of their intellectual property rights that the foreign providers encounter in Jamaica.

Mr. Allen raised the matter while speaking as a guest on TVJ's All Angles on Wednesday night.

"The issue of how we treat with other people's property rights is an issue for us when we are trying to get into these other markets," he said, adding that this applies, "not just for our television content, but also for our music content."

   
The matter of  intellectual property rights in Jamaica has come into sharper focus since the Broadcasting Commission announced a week ago that local cable operators have been instructed to cease airing 19 channels because they did not acquire the rights to broadcast them.

   
Mr Allen highlighted the fact that breaches of local intellectual property rights arose during this year's ISSA Grace Kennedy Boys and Girls Champs, which TVJ broadcast and went into distribution on a pay-per-view basis outside of Jamaica.

"We had persons who were buying one subscription, promoting it to be aired in forty locations across the US, from that subscription, and taking a contribution of ten US dollars per person, coming into those locations," he explained.

 

Attorney-at-Law Damian Cox, who also appeared on All Angles, urged cable operators to quickly enter into negotiations with content providers so that they can begin to comply with the terms of  their licenses.

"We are subject to a number of treaties that we are a  party to, and there's also domestic legislation," he stressed.

Against that background, he said all licensees "must abide by the general terms of their licence, which include respecting copyright and paying for the content that they are receiving and are showing to their customers."

He reiterated that intellectual property rights are fundamental to protecting the creative industries in Jamaica and abroad, so compliance is mandatory.