LAST Friday, Eddy Grant continued the campaign to have Guyana move to have strong legislation to deal with people who infringe others' intellectual property.
In his address to the gathering that had assembled at the Plaisance Market Square to honour him, he said that if only Guyana could move to protect intellectual property, then it could be in a position to relegate such commodities as rice and sugar to the back burner of economic earners.
Eddy Grant is a multi-millionaire by any standard. He made all his money from his music starting from the time when he sang with the British group called the Equals way back in the 1970s. He was to venture out on his own after a heart ailment when he was a mere 23-years-old.
A few years back, during an interview, he said that had he been in Guyana as a producer of music then he would never have made money because people would have pirated his music and sold it for little or nothing.
However, in England, where there is a great respect for intellectual property, he was able to earn a livelihood. Such were his earnings that he was able to bid millions of pounds to buy Bob Marley's works when there were attempts to market these. He has also spent several millions of dollars to buy the copyright for some of the old calypso legends, including the Mighty Sparrow.
He has restored these works and is marketing them on compact disc in a continuing drive to fortify his life and the reputation of those who helped fashion the art form. And as he does so, he continues to invest at this time in Barbados, his home away from home.
As far back in the 1980s, the then President of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, began the possibility of Grant investing in Guyana, and indeed he might have had the requisite legislation to protect his investments. But that was not to be. Two decades later and we are still to have the legislation in place. It matters not that the World Trade Organisation has set a time frame for us to comply.
Of course, with the introduction of proper copyright legislation, television, as we know it, would cease to exist. We need to forget the political expediency. The people are going to raise a ruckus when they can no longer access what passes for a free show pirated from the satellites that hover within the range of our dishes and antennas. But they would learn that what is others, cannot be claimed by them.
But what about those Guyanese who are equally creative but who cannot earn a livelihood because their works are not protected from anyone who wants to capitalise on them?
Eddy Grant firmly believes that if Guyana should put copyright legislation in place, it could see millions of dollars flowing into the coffers. He spoke of his contribution to the Barbados economy. He said that when he went to Barbados, they did not have a single calypsonian.
People laughed at his efforts to find a Bajan calypsonian. But he installed a recording facility. The rest is history. Since then, there have been so many others, not least among them Gabby and Allison Hinds. Trinidad, the Mecca of the calypso art form, was forced to play catch up because the Barbadians had surged so far ahead.
Needless to say, the Barbadian records have made a number of the performers, household names in Guyana. Guyana, whose people went to that little island to perform to rave reviews, are now nowhere near to the Barbadian performer and that is because of Eddy Grant.
There are people in our society who have been complaining about the frustration they face to market things, such as, textbooks and the like. They claim that people reprint these books with impunity.
One man said that when he complained to an official, that official simply remarked, whether the importer was averse to anyone making a dollar.
We do know that if there is legislation for intellectual property then many of us would earn what we really deserve. If we want to see cricket then we would have to pay, as we would have to for so many programmes that we see for nothing.
Advertising would take on a new meaning; our singers would no longer be the mendicants they are; and we would have a whole new set of products to earn foreign exchange for the benefit of all Guyanese.