(Extract of a conversation with the late Victor Ramraj (1941-2014) and musician John ‘Slingshot’ Drepaul. Ramraj was attached to the University of Calgary, Canada, as Professor of English, and ‘Slingshot’ is based in the USA. Georgetown, Guyana, 2009)
PP: COPYRIGHT is a complex and also a delicate subject; sometimes so delicate and so complex it becomes an enigma and it moves into that phase where sometimes you see it and sometimes you don’t; sometimes it’s alive, sometimes dead. And because of all that, most of us take little interest in copyright. What does copyright mean to you, to the layman and to the country?

JD: If I break and enter a man’s home, I’ll be arrested. I’ll be put through the legal system and incarcerated, admitting my guilt. When someone breaks and enters my home, the situation is the same. I call my creation, my creativity, my home. I compose – that is my livelihood. If someone robs me of that livelihood, to quote the Bard, ‘robs me of that which not enriches him’ but leaves me poorer in the end.

VR: Well, it is considered a felony in some countries; it is stealing. In the university, it is called plagiarism, and students could be expelled for (plagiarizing essays). It is, as you said, a complex issue; the blanket term is intellectual property (IP) and it covers copyright, patents, trademarks and so forth. But indeed it is a complex issue. Do you know that ‘happy birthday’ is copyrighted? If you sing it in the public and making money from it, you should pay royalty. If you do it privately at home, that’s another matter. Do you know that the yellow smiley face, the symbol, is copyrighted? In fact, right now there is a big case on: The chap who created it didn’t copyright it in the USA, and a merchandising giant wanted to use it as their logo… It’s a big issue.

Here’s a situation: Umpteen years ago, while I was teaching at Queen’s College, I published a ghost story in St Stanislaus College magazine, and one of my students reproduced that story en toto. To this day, I don’t know if he was flattering me or hoping that I wouldn’t recognize my own story.

PP: What was the upshot?
VR: It was plagiarism, and I spoke with him about stealing intellectual property.
PP: In that instance, you could have spoken to that student on a one-on-one basis. What happens in the wider society?
JD: A few years ago, we were at Rosignol Stelling, that was after my accident, so that would be 2006, the year on Mashramani we portrayed ‘Pirates’, and the driver said, ‘Slingshot, look at this!’ There was this vendor on a three-wheel cart selling music (CDs), and the driver called him across and asked if he had anything on ‘Slingshot’ and the guy replied in the affirmative and pulled out his copies. When asked how much, he replied, $300, so the driver asked him if he knows me, pointing to me, and the guy turned away, using words unbecoming, adding ‘yuh know ah gat to mek a living’. Here’s the irony, I said ‘man, carry on!’ and that is the curse.

(singing) Opposition and Government come together in parliament and put an end to this piracy. Alyuh bury the coffin quickly. It’s a crying shame, oh Lord, don’t point the blame, stop yakking yuh jaws, pass stiff-stiff laws, ah begging yuh please see eye to eye wid we. Allyuh silence breading more piracy….

PP: The laws are there
JD: But are not being enforced
PP: What do we do about it? Why must you work and then turn around and work again, as it were, to ensure that you have a right to be recompensed for your work? Why must you have to work again to claim that right to be recompensed?
JD: What we should not do is to decide not to write, because there is no money in it; you would not sleep…
PP: That’s the raison d’etre for copyright – to encourage creativity, to encourage excellence…
VR: One of the things you [Slingshot] should do is not to romanticize it by calling it piracy…They are felons, no ifs and buts about that…

Copyright protects the creator, but there is more to it. For instance, the novel is not only the printed product; it’s the writer who creates it and the reader who reads it. You have to have both. Like you [Slingshot], you write your songs and you need someone to listen to (them). So copyright protects the creator, but there is something called ‘fair usage’ in United States and ‘fair dealing’ in Canada, where we are allowed to quote a few lines from a poem, sometimes an entire poem if it is short, but we have to acknowledge we have done that in an article or so…So we should allow some fair use.

But as you asked ‘Slingshot’, how do you enforce it where people are pirating because they say they cannot afford to buy? How do you enforce it? Throw them in jail? Make them pay a fine?

In Canada, there is a blanket compensation for authors who have books in libraries. Maybe the States should have something like that…
JD: Thank you
VR: Now if your work is played on the radio, you can be compensated. But I don’t know how you could do it with piracy. The government perhaps can keep an eye on that; how many copies are pirated. We adhere to the Berne Convention, but you have to pay people to do the enforcement. Perhaps this money could go to the creators…

JD: Earlier this morning, I had a conversation with young Bill Rogers, and I said to him: For a long time, I have mulled over this idea, and I dare not voice it because sometimes you say things and they are misinterpreted, misrepresented, misquoted, taken out of context …and then you are pilloried.

Here is what I said: All artistes, whether with the pen or voice or whatever, should register with an organization sanctioned by the government and that gives the artiste some modicum of recognition.

PP: Also affording the artist some space and time to continue to produce….
JD: Look at this example. I am holding it [a copy of The Guyana Annual 2009 issue dedicated to Edgar Mittelholzer, edited by Petamber Persaud and published by Guyenterprise Ltd.] this is Mittelholzer, his wife sits in England, but you dare not use his work, you have to go through the proper channel, and I am sitting here as a living witness to exactly that, because there is a project on to produce a movie on ‘Corentyne Thunder’, and I wouldn’t say more because I am not at liberty to reveal what was discussed.
PP: More living witness [holding up the same magazine], I asked his wife Jacqueline Ward for permission to reproduce these images which she supplied.
I also asked Jacqueline deWeever for permission to reproduce Seymour’s writings on Mittelholzer…
JD: That’s the professional thing to do. I must congratulate you.
Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com
What’s happening:
? The Guyana Annual Magazine 2014-2015 issue in now available at Guyenterprise Ltd., Lance Gibbs and Irving Streets, Tel # 226-9874, the National Library and from yours truly.

 
By Petamber Persaud