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Monday, July 21, 2025

Intellectual Property Office responds to copyright claims: Posting Carnival pictures on Facebook no breach of law

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20130215

Copy­right con­cerns

Post­ing pho­tographs on Face­book for per­son­al pur­pos­es does not breach the law. This is ac­cord­ing to Deputy Con­troller of the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice (IPO) Tene Re­ece. She was re­spond­ing to state­ments made by T&T Copy­right Col­lec­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TTCO) CEO Richard Corn­wall about post­ing pho­tographs of mas cos­tumes on Face­book.

On Car­ni­val Sun­day, Corn­wall warned the pub­lic against post­ing pho­tos of mas on Face­book be­cause of pos­si­ble copy­right in­fringe­ment.

His or­gan­i­sa­tion has al­so been de­mand­ing over­due copy­right fees from both the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and me­dia hous­es about over­due copy­right fees for works of mas. The TTCO sent pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters to Guardian Me­dia Ltd, One Caribbean Me­dia Ltd, Caribbean New Me­dia Group and the NCC, threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion if the fees it claimed were not paid.

Cov­er­age of Car­ni­val car­ried on as nor­mal, how­ev­er. Corn­wall claimed post­ing pic­tures of mas cos­tumes on Face­book gave oth­er bod­ies "op­tions of graph­ics" for com­mer­cial gain, in an ar­ti­cle in the News­day news­pa­per. Re­ece said she had nev­er heard of "op­tions of graph­ics." The IPO is a gov­ern­ment of­fice re­spon­si­ble for ad­min­is­ter­ing in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty laws.

Re­ece al­so said post­ing pho­tographs on Face­book for per­son­al pur­pos­es did not breach the law. "To use a spe­cif­ic ex­am­ple: you and I are play­ing mas in a par­tic­u­lar band...As we play, I de­cide to take a pho­to­graph of the both of us in cos­tume and place it on my Face­book page.

"The is­sue is whether such an ac­tion, that is, tak­ing a pho­to­graph of us and plac­ing it on my Face­book page, would con­sti­tute an of­fence un­der the Copy­right Act. "The sim­ple an­swer is no, it would not. To sug­gest oth­er­wise is an ex­treme in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law." Re­ece added that not all works of mas would fall un­der copy­right pro­tec­tion.

"Copy­right on­ly ap­plies to orig­i­nal lit­er­ary and artis­tic works–and I want to stress on­ly orig­i­nal works are pro­tect­ed by copy­right," she said. "There­fore not all our mas cos­tumes would at­tract copy­right pro­tec­tion, be­cause they are not all orig­i­nal. Tra­di­tion­al mas cos­tumes like sailor mas or blue dev­ils could not be copy­right­ed. "Al­so, biki­ni-based cos­tumes would not fall un­der such pro­tec­tion."

She said the TTCO need­ed to spec­i­fy who it was rep­re­sent­ing, as copy­right pro­tec­tion would ap­ply pri­mar­i­ly to the large king and queen cos­tumes. Copy­right lawyer An­tho­ny Cher­ry told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day he, too, had nev­er heard of "op­tions of graph­ics" any­where in the copy­right law of T&T.

He al­so said he did not agree with Corn­wall that peo­ple who post­ed pho­tos to Face­book then be­came re­spon­si­ble if their pho­tos were un­know­ing­ly tak­en for com­mer­cial use. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Cher­ry not­ed that it was par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to con­trol things in the pub­lic do­main such as mas.

TTCO re­sponds

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Corn­wall said he did not re­call us­ing the words "op­tions of graph­ics." He said those words were used by the TTCO's at­tor­ney Carl­ton George. None of the me­dia hous­es had re­spond­ed to the le­gal let­ters, he said, al­though many ar­ti­cles had been writ­ten about the is­sue.

"I find it pass­ing strange that so much em­pha­sis is be­ing placed on try­ing to find out as much as pos­si­ble and it seems as though the me­dia hous­es are gath­er­ing in­fo be­fore re­spond­ing to the le­gal let­ters," he said. "So there are ques­tions that I will cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly not an­swer." Corn­wall added that the TTCO was con­sid­er­ing host­ing a pub­lic fo­rum, to which the me­dia would al­so be in­vit­ed, to an­swer all ques­tions about the mat­ter.


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