Shadow Culture Minister to push for modern copyright law to protect artists

Last Updated on Saturday, 20 January 2024, 14:37 by Denis Chabrol

Newly-minted Shadow Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Nima Flue-Bess intends to campaign for long-overdue modern copyright legislation to protect the artistic works of Guyanese composers, authors, poets and other artists.

“We have to ensure that we have the necessary legislation that would help to protect the work that our people would have done,” she said. A teacher by profession, she bemoaned the absence of proper protection for creative works and instead copycatting. Being in the education system and around youths, I’ve seen persons do a lot of work- pieces it being poetry, a song or something- and we would see other persons using the original ideas, original pieces and sometimes owning it for themselves so we have to do what is necessary to protect the arts.

Guyana’s copyright law is the 1956 British Copyright Act that the country inherited at the time of independence in 1966.

The People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) administration had previously shied away from enacting modern copyright and intellectual property legislation on the grounds that it would make books more expensive for ordinary people.  Instead, in 2012 the government had awarded a multimillion dollar contract to a West Demerara entity to photocopy textbooks for distribution by the Ministry of Education. The United Kingdom Publishers Association had, however, stalled that contract by securing injunctions against several entities that had copied and sold textbooks on the local market.

She pledged t0 serve “my people” regardless of the task that has been assigned to her especially in continuing her interactions with persons in the sporting fraternity.

Ms Flue-Bess, a trained Physical Education Teacher, said she would keeping the government on its toes in the areas of culture, youth and sport. “I will hold the government accountable to ensure that our youths, our people benefit from what they are supposed to benefit from when it comes to youth, sport and culture in the country,” she said.

Asked what she would do different from her predecessor, Jermaine Figueira who was axed from that portfolio and the shadow cabinet overall, she decline to be drawn into comment but said she would be advocating for increased access to facilities in all three arena. “One of the things we need to remember is that culture is not just about sport. Culture is about the arts, culture involves uniting people and there are things that I know that can be done to ensure that our people practice their culture in a safe space,” she said.

Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton earlier this month said he opted to pick Ms Flue-Bess as Shadow Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport because she is “activist-oriented” and has a lot of connections in the sporting fraternity.

In response to direct questions from Demerara Waves Online News for a reaction to Mr Norton’s decision, Mr Figueira had admitted that Mr Norton’s performance assessment of him was correct, promised to support Ms Flue-Bess in any way he could, but said his People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) party needed to have a “serious discussion going forward on the approach of how we treat and engage fellow comrades with a greater appreciation for respect in our affairs going forward.” Mr Figueira then turned around and said he was being sarcastic in his comments to Demerara Waves, and laid bare his position.

Mr Figueira said the PNCR Leader was receiving a negative backlash “from the support base on the ground for his “baseless, witless, inept and daft analysis of my performance and decisions on his pre-budget, pre-elections, political moves.”