While music distributors are complaining about the dearth of new works being delivered to retail outlets, pirates are already offering compilations of 2005 soca songs, as evidenced by the arrest yesterday of one such person in the heart of Port of Spain.
By Terry Joseph"It is really astonishing, not just the brass-faced way in which they set up vending of stolen property but that they can already have for sale works not yet available to the public through regular lawful channels," said Copyright Organisation (COTT) CEO Allison Demas.
"That police can arrest a young man with unreleased or freshly released works would be amazing if it were not so blatantly illegal."
Demas was commenting on the arrest yesterday morning of a man with a quantity of CDs allegedly from a source other than the legitimate supplier of such music, who was held by a police team led by Sgt Pascall of the Port of Spain Special Anti-Crime Unit, hawking apparently pirated music at the corner of Henry Street and Independence Square.
The young man, who is due to appear before a city magistrate this morning, was held with compilations of music CDs of works registered with COTT, catalogued as Soca 2005 Volume One and other similar type collections numbering Two, Three and Four, featuring works by Blackie ("Ah Hook"), the Shurwayne Winchester/Bunji Garlin collaboration "Don't Waste the Water", Trini Jacobs' "Wine Behind the Truck" and Garlin's "Preaching War", songs not yet available at music stores. Earlier this week Winchester, in a radio interview, said his songs would soon be released.
Also seized were seasonal soca compilations of mostly parangsoca music, featuring Baron, Sharlene Flores and other artistes of the genre and Vintage Soca Specials with songs including Nelson's "Disco Daddy" and Black Stalin's "Feeling to Party".
Demas said she wished to publicly thank Sgt Pascall and his team for including music piracy as one of the crimes for which the police were on the lookout in Downtown Port of Spain.
"We are grateful for the increased vigilance and the increasing awareness by police officers of the criminal aspect of music piracy," Demas said.
