Derek Achong

A last-minute agree­ment be­tween the Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T and event pro­mot­ers yes­ter­day evening avert­ed a le­gal threat which sought to pre­vent the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed House of Mar­ley con­cert to­mor­row night. The deal was bro­kered af­ter dis­cus­sions were held late yes­ter­day af­ter­noon at the St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's lawyer Mar­tin George. Af­ter the talks, the event's pro­mot­er Tri-Star Pro­mo­tions paid the sum which was nec­es­sary to ob­tain a li­cence from the or­gan­i­sa­tion for the event. The T&T Guardian was told an ini­tial es­ti­mate of $200,000 was quot­ed by the or­gan­i­sa­tion to Tri-Star to cov­er the copy­right li­cence for the event. In at­ten­dance at yes­ter­day's emer­gency meet­ing was Tri-Star's di­rec­tor Roy Ma­haraj and the or­gan­i­sa­tion's pres­i­dent John Ryan Ro­many.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said: "Pay­ing for the li­cence was nev­er the is­sue...The prob­lem was the cost of the li­cence." Ma­haraj de­scribed the meet­ing as a suc­cess­ful with both par­ties com­ing to an agree­ment over the fees to be paid. He said the new­ly-agreed fee would de­pend on checks which would be made by of­fi­cials of the or­gan­i­sa­tion at the con­cert. How­ev­er, he could not re­veal the ex­act na­ture of the process which would be em­ployed. At a press con­fer­ence ear­li­er in the day, George told re­porters that his client had giv­en Tri-Star a dead­line of noon to­day for the pay­ment to be made. At that time, George said, his client had been in con­tact with Tri-Star for some time, but they failed to re­spond with­in the dead­line giv­en by the or­gan­i­sa­tion. George had said if the sum had not been paid, his client would seek a High Court in­junc­tion seek­ing to have the show put on hold. The event, which has been tout­ed as a "once in a life­time ex­pe­ri­ence," fea­tures four sons of the late Ja­maican reg­gae leg­end, Bob Mar­ley, as well as sev­er­al lo­cal per­form­ers. The broth­ers are Dami­an, Stephen, Ky-Mani and Ju­lian Mar­ley, who have all fol­lowed in their fa­ther's foot­steps to be­come in­ter­na­tion­al record­ing artistes.

The show will be held at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um in Port-of-Spain. Ra­dio sta­tion Slam 100.5, which is part Guardian Me­dia Ltd, is one of the show's spon­sors. The Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion, which was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 1984 and based at Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, ex­er­cis­es its du­ties un­der the Copy­right Act of 1997. It is among three non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions in T&T which col­lect copy­right fees. "While the Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion wish­es to main­tain a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the pro­mot­ers, they are, how­ev­er, pre­pared if nec­es­sary to take this to the next lev­el by go­ing to court for an in­junc­tion," George said. "As we cel­e­brate our 50th In­de­pen­dence and hail our pan­men, mas­men, so­ca and ca­lyp­so artists, it is im­por­tant to not just cel­e­brate them but recog­nise the val­ue of their work and en­sure that they re­ceive the ad­e­quate com­pen­sa­tion for that." He said his client sought to pro­tect mu­sic pro­duc­ers, com­posers and writ­ers in T&T.