This year, is­sues with the way that ac­cred­i­ta­tion to cov­er Car­ni­val is be­ing arranged and copy­right fees have been paid to stake­hold­ers have raised le­git­i­mate con­cerns about man­age­ment of the fes­ti­val's in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty.

At least part of the prob­lem aris­es be­cause Car­ni­val's stake­hold­ers ap­pear to be wor­ried that there is so much less about the fes­ti­val that's unique or saleable and what's left must be zeal­ous­ly pro­tect­ed.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it's far too late for that. The mag­i­cal qual­i­ty of steel­band was in­tro­duced to the world in a se­ries of tours that en­tranced, in­trigued and ul­ti­mate­ly in­volved the mu­si­cians of many na­tions around the world.

Our pan am­bas­sadors be­came spores, seed­ing the world with hun­dreds of small steel­bands that end­ed the lu­cra­tive tours and for­ev­er de­cen­tralised con­trol over the de­vel­op­ment of the in­stru­ment.

Decades lat­er, the steel­band move­ment is still to re­cov­er that au­thor­i­ty. To this day, a sim­ple Google search on the word "steel­band" re­turns dozens of pages of re­sults lead­ing to Web sites for bands, none of which are from T&T.

Sim­i­lar is­sues of cre­ative au­thor­i­ty, In­ter­net pres­ence and sim­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tions fun­da­men­tals al­so plague the worlds of mas­quer­ade and ca­lyp­so.

In an at­tempt to ad­dress those short­falls, Car­ni­val's stake­hold­ers have hiked the rates for cov­er­age. It now costs more than $6,000 for a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to record Car­ni­val for per­son­al use. Rates sky­rock­et from there. Un­like nor­mal li­cenc­ing arrange­ments, how­ev­er, the pre­cise rights that are be­ing con­ferred are no­tably un­clear.

Am­a­teur pho­tog­ra­phers and video­g­ra­phers have the op­tion of ei­ther choos­ing to find oth­er ways of pho­tograph­ing the event from pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble ar­eas or de­clin­ing to record the event en­tire­ly.

The me­dia do not have that lux­u­ry. An in­ter­nal con­flict be­tween the NCC, NC­BA and NCDF spilled in­to the busi­ness of jour­nal­ism af­ter me­dia hous­es, Guardian Me­dia in­clud­ed, re­ceived lawyer's let­ters from the T&T Copy­right Col­lec­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TTCO) claim­ing un­paid copy­right fees for record­ing Car­ni­val back­dat­ed to 2007.

This ac­tion is a dan­ger­ous mis­un­der­stand­ing of the role of the me­dia in seek­ing the pub­lic's in­ter­est in a na­tion­al event and in that care­less­ness and haste to cash in, there is al­so the very re­al po­ten­tial chill­ing ef­fect for doc­u­men­tar­i­ans in­ter­est­ed in record­ing the fes­ti­val for pos­ter­i­ty.

These ac­tions take place in an en­vi­ron­ment in which all of Car­ni­val's stake­hold­ers are ful­ly aware of the ap­palling state of the pub­lic record of Car­ni­val's his­to­ry.

It might have seemed ap­pro­pri­ate for Car­ni­val's stake­hold­ers to seek rap­proche­ment with the me­dia to im­prove pub­lic record of the event and to ex­plore the lever­ag­ing of such cov­er­age to our ad­van­tage.

The de­ba­cle of Panora­ma semi­fi­nals not be­ing broad­cast or pro­fes­sion­al­ly record­ed to video on­ly points to the need to com­plete­ly re­think the re­la­tion­ship be­tween me­dia and the fes­ti­val's stake­hold­ers

The in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of mas cre­ators and per­form­ers must be pro­tect­ed, but Car­ni­val is not a mu­se­um piece to be pro­tect­ed, it's a liv­ing event that de­mands a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the syn­er­gies that can ex­ist be­tween pre­sen­ta­tion, doc­u­men­ta­tion and au­di­ence, some­thing that can on­ly im­prove the reach and pop­u­lar­i­ty of the fes­ti­val.

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