FORTY-NINE AUTHORS and publishers received royalty cheques totalling $545,956 last Thursday at the offices of the Jamaican Copyright Licensing Agency (JAMCOPY) in Kingston. It was the first presentation of royalties by the agency since it was formed in 1998.
Shirley Carby, chairman of JAMCOPY's board of directors, said the royalties "are part of the proceeds received from the first licence signed between JAMCOPY and the Government" in 2001.
"We were not able to make a distribution before now because the licence fees were not received from Government in a timely manner," Ms. Carby pointed out. "We recently, however, received a substantial payment from which this disbursement is being made."
37 'CREATORS' GET CHEQUES
Among the 37 'creators' collecting cheques amounting $264,706 were writer Vilma McLennon, photographer Rambarran Mangal, and composers/writers Godfrey Taylor and Rosina Moder. Sangster's Book Stores, Ian Randle Publishers, the HEART Trust/NTA and the University of the West Indies Press were some of the nine publishers presented with cheques totalling $281,250.
The distribution of cheques, Ms. Carby noted, was done on a 'non-title-specific basis'. This means that the recipients were paid without an accurate sense of the extent of the use of their work. JAMCOPY, she added, plans to institute a data collection process by 2006 to issue actual usage data along with future distribution of funds.
The issue of copyright has always been a sensitive matter in Jamaica, particularly among musicians from Jamaica's so-called golden era of reggae in the 1960s. Since the passage of the Jamaica Copyright Act in 1993, some of the country's most respected songwriters, including Bob Andy, have received outstanding royalty cheques.
