Once and for all, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism must step in and clar­i­fy the many con­fus­ing copy­right and ac­cred­i­ta­tion is­sues in Car­ni­val. There are too many grey ar­eas over­shad­ow­ing how this coun­try's biggest na­tion­al fes­ti­val should be doc­u­ment­ed, pre­sent­ed and pro­tect­ed and there is an ur­gent need for the roles of the var­i­ous in­ter­est groups and agen­cies to be prop­er­ly de­fined.The cre­ative works of Car­ni­val must be pro­tect­ed and mon­e­tised–there is no de­bate about that. But in the ab­sence of prop­er man­age­ment of the fes­ti­val's in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, sev­er­al groups are fight­ing to as­sert their claims to rev­enue from Car­ni­val, with threats of law­suits and oth­er ac­tions in­creas­ing the event's bac­cha­nal ra­tio un­nec­es­sar­i­ly.

This sea­son's biggest rights con­fu­sion to date in­volves the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA), which has re­port­ed­ly told sev­er­al pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers seek­ing ac­cred­i­ta­tion to cov­er Car­ni­val that they may not post im­ages of mas­quer­aders or mas events on so­cial me­dia be­cause on­line pub­lish­ing rights had been award­ed to one pho­to­graph­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Whether the NC­BA has the right to de­ter­mine if a pho­tog­ra­ph­er should be al­lowed to pub­lish Car­ni­val im­ages on Face­book, Twit­ter or any oth­er so­cial me­dia plat­form or Web site is the first point of con­tention.

for your Free Tri­al of the Dig­i­tal Guardian.

No pay­ment de­tails re­quired, for your Free Tri­al.