(Excerpt of an interview with Dr Mark Tumbridge, Georgetown, Guyana, August 2015. One of his interests is comparative cultural studies. )
PP: The more I look at copyright the more intriguing it becomes. Although there are set rules, patterns, laws, conventions etc., the more you look at it the more you run into different scenarios.
Coming from the University of Warwick, UK, now on attachment to the University of Guyana, let’s look at copyright in the UK.
MT: With regard to copyright, it is very interesting, it is highly complex, and kind of varies from region to region. And I might add it is a legal instrument; but to fully understand all the legal implications, you need to be a lawyer to get into the dense details. I think lawyers probable make a lot of money in this area.
My interest is really where the cultural aspects come into it – the ramification on the economic, the social, the political, and on the internet.
There is the basic of copyright in the UK which can be found on the websites www.gov.uk/copyright and www.legislation.gov.uk,/ where you get the really heavy legal stuff.
Essentially speaking, literary texts are protected as they term it for life plus fifty years… For example, let’s take Virginia Wolf who died by suicide around World War 11, her work is coming out of copyright.
With music it is slightly different, in that copyright is seventy years from time when it is published/performed. We also have to think about now – there other things apart from literature and music, like software …the basic is seventy years particularly in the UK, and slightly different in the US. For me, it is interesting in comparing the different forms and comparing the examples of different forms to illustrate the grey, greyer areas of what we are talking about …
PP: So far we have touched on the basics of copyright. What about enforcement in the UK?
MT: Enforcement, well, this is really interesting. In terms of literature, it is definitely harder to pirate a work of literature in the UK – that’s my general experience. Some books that are available where you could just download them and pirate them – I know there are some Russian sites on the internet where you can go and download copyrighted material; those sites are actually blocked in the UK, when you are actually, physically in the UK, you cannot not gain access to those sites once they know, they block them. And that goes for not only music but for literary sites as well…
PP: You are a UK citizen and you are in Guyana so you could get access to those sites
MT: Yes, once you are outside of the UK, in any part of the world where sites are not blocked, you can have access.
The bothering thing is that persons have thrown their energies in producing this thing and essentially they are not going to get paid if you go and download, sort of rip off the author, you are essentially taking away money from that artist.

When you come to people who are well off – U2 would be a proper example because recently they have made their album completely free, you don’t have to pay, they have essentially given it away. This move to me smacks of they reducing their music to being sort of advert.
PP: I remember the Mighty Sparrow saying in this same studio he is not mindful of people downloading his work because more people would get to hear his work…
MT: Yes, so U2 is basically doing this as a promotion for their world tour where they make all their money, travelling around the world, charging large amounts of monies
PP: The moment an idea leaves the mind and is recorded in some form and on some format it is copyrighted. There are cases of people taking parts of copyrighted material, especially music and using it, I am getting back to a term you used earlier, ‘the artist integrity’, expand on that.
MT: For me, it is really important for anyone, be it the artist or the scholar …whatever you are working within cultural production to have this idea of the artist integrity. Here we are talking of an ‘artist’ going and completely ripping something off and representing it as their own work …in such a case the artist loses credibility completely.
There are some interesting cases. One would be Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams ‘Blurred Lines’, which was a massive international hit, every which where you turn you could hear that song and they made a huge amount of money from it. But the actual music comes from a Marvin Gaye tune back in the late1970s called ‘Got to give it up’, and I would encourage everyone to go and listen to Marvin Gaye’s song because it is fantastic and these guys just rip this off without going to Marvin Gaye’s estate and getting permission and Marvin Gaye estate sued them in a multimillion dollar lawsuit and won ….
PP: Which was the correct thing to do, get permission, pay their dues to the estate…
MT: …if they had done that, their creditability would have been rescued and I would not be using them now as an example of poor practice…
PP: There was another example you shared with me about a book…
MT: Yes, the book – in reference to books, there are grey areas like satire, parody. But one example would be J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series and another series of books which have done quite well in the UK called ‘Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody’ by Michael Gerber, and it is clearly a parody, but the books are there in the shops…
All these are interesting cases and they help us to understand copyright much better.
To me that integrity is really important – the artist integrity. The artists who have thrown their body and soul into their work must be paid, we must pay them, we must support them …
PP: Yes, we must support the artist and there are systems in place – seek permission to use the song, book, play, film etc, pay your dues to the copyright holder, and get something from the product legitimately; a win-win situation, everyone is happy. No need to…
MT: Rip off….
PP: …Do this criminal act.
But I am happy with the recent announcement that our government will soon enact modern IP legislation…
MT: That would literally change everything, the culture will have to change as well, because a whole generation of young people who are growing up expecting music to be free will find it is not so when that happens….
PP: Thank you for your insight into this subject and for throwing light on different forms of copyright.
(Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)
by Petamber Persaud