Category: Ministry of Information

More On Carnival, CNMG, Copyright and Gayelle

February 17, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

When Edmund Gall first wrote about the de facto monopolization of Carnival broadcast rights in Trinidad and Tobago (read it!), he mentioned friend Mark Lyndersay's point that it was more about control than optimization. When I wrote about the issue last night, I took the same tack.

Is it the right tack? Some may not think so. Lets consider a parallel. Let us consider broadcast rights in sports.

In sports, media companies are granted rights to broadcast and rebroadcast a sporting event - be it the Olympics, the Super Bowl, cricket, tennis, etc. A key difference between carnival and sport is that sports broadcasts are typically of people getting paid to move a ball from one place to another. This is not to diminish their ability with balls - it is in fact because they are so good with moving balls around that they get paid. Carnival, on the other hand, has people who have paid to play mas (for foreigners, that means dancing and prancing in costumes some deem artistic).

Thus, the very basis of the parallel is skewed: Sports broadcasts are of people who are typically paid to play with balls. Carnival broadcasts are typically of people who paid to play themselves. The balls joke was too easy. {Read more}

Carnival, CNMG, Copyright and Gayelle

February 17, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

I would just like to point out that I'm supporting Gayelle here in Trinidad, that someone suing for coverage of what is labeled a cultural event is reprehensible.

I'd like to see everyone who was pictured or videoed under CNMG's copyright say that they signed a document stating that CNMG could exclusively display their images and videos for profit. Let me get this straight: people pay to play in bands, then the state owned enterprise CNMG takes the images of the people who spent money and profits from them?

Copyright. The government has taken a state owned corporation and made it in charge of commercial interests of Carnival - that's basically excising private enterprise and putting it in the hands of government. So the content that is owned by the State Owned Enterprise would belong to the government of Trinidad and Tobago which is supposed to be holding it in trust of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. What a brilliant way for the government to make money and assure more control of media in Trinidad and Tobago. A stupid tax with the capacity for censorship through a state run enterprise.

Hitler would be so proud! Not only getting the propaganda machine up but having the people subsidize it with their own spending on costumes, etc. {Read more}

9 Years: Unacceptable

October 28, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

When I got an email this morning with the title of 'Unacceptable' from Raul Bermudez, through the main computing email list of Trinidad and Tobago, I wondered what it could be this time. There are plenty of things that I believe should be considered unacceptable in Trinidad and Tobago. Rather than list those, I'll get to the meat of the email.

The content of the email was a simple link to Andy Johnson's article, Standard of living 'generally acceptable'.

I read. It's about information that has just been released from the 2000 census. 2000. A primary school student would be able to surmise that the information is 9 years old, but that isn't Andy's fault. 9 years. And there are many people who I know that claim that no one approached them about the census, so there is a question of how thorough the census actually has been.

But it took them 9 years to release the information. 9 years. Likely, the report has only now been released - and that means for the last 9 years, the government has been doing planning for infrastructure and the future without data to substantiate it. And those plans have been enacted in the form of annual budgets that make as much sense as the lack of hard data behind them.  {Read more}