Counterfeit goods do not have the same large monetary impact on the Bahamian business community as they do in other nations, the Bahamas Employers Confederation’s (BECon) president told The Tribune yesterday, yet they inflict significant damage to its reputation, leaving it vulnerable to snactions and making other countries reluctant to do business with it.
Brian Nutt said counterfeit goods such as DVD’s, which infringed on the copryright and intellectual property rights of companies in the entertainment and media industries, in particular had left the Bahamas vulnerable to sanctions and possibly damaged its reputation in the international community.
He added that the sale of counterfeit goods, such as clothing, footwear, DVD, movies and other electronic items, was an issue that both the private sector and Government needed to be aware of.
This was especially since the Bahamas earlier this year had come close to being placed on the US ‘priority foreign country’ list for alleged copyright deficiencies, following intense lobbying by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the body that represents the top US film producers.
Mr. Nutt said, “The Motion Picture Association has taken a stance against us because of the amount of video piracy, bootleg copies of DVD’s and videos, and picking up scrambled signals from air. They put pressure on the US Government to put pressure on us. Any infringement of copyrights or intellectual property rights – jeans to computer software – affects the Bahamas in the eyes of the international community.”
Allyson Maynard-Gibson minister of financial services and investments said earlier this year that a failure to compy with US Demands to “narrow ” its compulsory licensing regime for cable television operators could lead to the withdrawal ofthe Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) preference regime and subject some $154.2 million worth of Bahamian exports to sanctions.
Source: Yolanda Deleveaux, The Tribune
