Producing wearable art at Bahama Hand Print. (Photo: Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett)
The government often talks of celebrating Bahamian creativity and culture. The first thing 'they' do when they are invited somewhere is discuss taking Junkanoo to the event. That could mean paying for 300 strong junkanooers to be flown to Japan and taken care of while they are there. The public seldom complains.
As we round a new corner in the discussion on culture, it seems dishonest and in fact, corrupt to discuss culture as if government were truly involved in promoting or protecting Bahamian culture. They are not. In fact, their lack of engagement is threatening to undo so much of what so many generations of Bahamians have fought to produce and continue to fight to protect.
For years if not decades Bahamian artists have complained about the perils of creating in the Bahamas, and no one listened. The lack of any real relevant and active government policy and regulations with regard to Intellectual Property is simply put, backward. We talk so much of advancing to first world status, but yet each time we say that, we move further back. Each year government pays lip service and supposedly throws money at making it faster and easier to do business here, yet each year it becomes harder and more difficult to do so. Empty shops aren't just a result of the recession, the ubiquity of gambling houses popping up everywhere is asymptomatic of the lack of support given to Bahamian grown businesses that feed into the health and wellness of the public.
Any creative product produced in the Bahamas can be copied easily and sold off shore to a non-Bahamian manufacturer and be mass-produced at one tenth of what it costs a local Bahamian to create and produce it. Yet we see nothing wrong with this phenomenon. It is usually at this point that people say the Bahamas is made up of pirates. But when will the pirates surrender their bounty, when they know it is destroying the country they live in?
So let me throw out a hypothetical situation: If I produce a cup of uniquely Bahamian material made in The Bahamas, but a person takes a photo of it or buys one and takes it to China, Malaysia, India, Thailand, Taiwan. This is then shown to someone who has 500 people working for a dollar a week, without any care for international legal infrastructure, then use pattern that I spent four years to develop and create 5000 copies for cents on the dollar. The most offensive part of this equation is that they turn around and sell it back to the same people they stole the pattern from.
It's not stealing if you don't get caught, I hear people say often. However, the intellectual property and sweat that was put into creating that product has now been discarded. As cultural producers, Bahamians care little for what they have lost. They are happy to buy the same product cheaper from a charlatan than from someone we call brother.
Ironically, we feel no remorse. And worse, the government has allowed this illegality to continue.
As we spend so much time talking about creative culture and culture on the whole, let us take stock of the corruption inherent in the government system that facilitates the theft of intellectual property and patterns from Bahamians because someone in power must be benefiting.
Any work of art that is produced in the Bahamas, unless the person producing it is savvy enough to get his or her own right to it, the chances are it will be knocked off within the year. It is not even a knock off of flattery where another creation copies the intent, but rather a knock off of corruption where the only idea is to beat the owner of the idea to market and to destroy him or her on the way because the knock off can be made cheaper.
In fact, when Minister Ryan Pinder was in the Ministry, he claimed that there was an entire suite of Intellectual Property legislation ready to go as we acceded to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Years later, there has been no word on what that suite might be. This either shows complicity or simple government disregard for Bahamian creativity. It is obvious that government thinks little of creative people's minds or of their investment of time to produce anything. The mere fact that the dangers of such a lawless industry have been flagged countless times before should tell us that something is wrong.
One of the latest examples of cultural dishonesty and theft would be the plight brought to public attention by Miss Androsia who walked into a Bahamian business where they were selling fake Androsia fabric blatantly. Copyright and patenting means nothing in The Bahamas, a place where young people believe it is cool to boast about copying and pasting work from the Internet into one's own work and passing it off as one's own in a public speech.
We care so little about Intellectual Property rights that we celebrate plagiarists. Even when the crime is boasted about in public, nothing is done to the culprit. It may seem insignificant to run the red light because police will never be there to catch anyone, and if I gently hit someone's car I can get away with it because my car is bigger than theirs or I know someone who can make it disappear from record. What then happens if I kill someone as a result of my actions? The best word to answer this is probably nothing. The disregard is so high for life that someone can be killed and a connection can get someone off who has knowingly caused grievous bodily harm.
When it comes to someone's land, property or money if it is stolen, nothing happens to the perpetrator. At the end of the day, the entire country actually suffers and is ultimately undermined by the lack of legal infrastructure. However, Bahamians seem to thrive on this excuse and the double standards that permeate. However, as Androsia, straw plaiting and strong back are all co-opted by offshore imposters, nothing will be done to protect the time, money and sacrifice put into that product. What happened to Androsia over the past weeks is a mere example of how shamefacedly corrupt the system is and the failures of our legal system.
As we move on to the big day of creativity, there must be an environment that promotes creativity. Government is responsible for maintaining a lawful and regulated system of Intellectual Property. At every level of Bahamian society this seems to be disregarded from full out plagiarism to theft of patents and copying of people's creations: baskets, hats, bags, blouses.
In this way, government is complicit in the disregard for and breaking of international laws. The WTO and the United States take these things very seriously. When the straw vendors were held in New York for dealing in counterfeit goods that was an example of how seriously they take it. Why do we as a country continue to empower those who break laws and send those people who are law-abiding citizens to the poorhouse because the criminals steal from them and undercut their ability to earn money in the honest marketplace?
We seem to be celebrating piracy and the lawlessness of a pirate state. No intellectual property can be created in such a hostile environment, because, believe it or not, people pay to create new designs and when charlatans reproduce them without permission, they are in fact destroying a national cultural symbol. They are destroying a part of national culture, not building. The law and regulations are that.
Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett
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