The Caribbean Has No Public Domain.

As a few people know, I've been hard at work on OpenDepth.com - right now, taking a break from Einstein's 'Relativity : the Special and General Theory' which is almost half way done. And there's a note in the original Gutenberg text that, because Uncle Al didn't write the fifth Appendix (Relativity and the Problem of Space) until the fifteenth reprinting of the book... and that started me thinking about where the public domain starts and ends.

More importantly, where the publid domain starts. The Caribbean, when it comes to written works, is relatively in infancy compared to much of the rest of the world. The potpourri of cultures brought here are largely dependant on the works of other parts of the world; in a global society where information has become a commodity through copyright, another one of the global challenges of the Caribbean could well be that the Caribbean hasn't produced that much information. And what information it has created has been largely derivative of works of other cultures - which is to be expected - and yet, of these works, none of them are in the public domain.

I know the Caribbean has good writers. I've met some of them, I'm related to some of them, and I've read more than either of the latter (figure that one out). Still, when I participate in things like CARDICIS, I wonder. Such initiatives talk about sharing culture, and pay lip service to open content¹, but when I look at the new library of the world - the internet - I don't see much but advertorials written in the hope of tourism, and the majority of those advertorials aren't even written by people within the Caribbean.

Scratching your chin yet? I have been. The truth is that I was getting bored with what I was doing and decided to explore this thought², but really - where organizations such as the Copyright Organization of Trinidad and Tobago run around to small businesses to charge them for playing the radio in the business place³, and protecting the rights of Calypsonians, they are mainly assuring revenue streams out of the country when enforcing foreign copyright. As a business proposition, without hard numbers to prove to the contrary, this seems like bad business.

When it comes to education, countries in the region using textbooks use some texts that are - verily - in the public domain and which the Gutenberg Project make available at no cost. But the parents of students and, as they mature and survive the educational system, the students themselves pay high prices for things which they could get at no cost. Well, if they had internet access, which leads us to telecommunications.

Nobody said being young was easy, I suppose. When it comes to intellectual property, the Caribbean keeps hearing from foreigners the rendition of the song, I Got You Babe.

Yeah, they got you - babe. The information poor Caribbean, without oil, banana, sugar and tourism subsidies. They definitely have the Caribbean's market for information. And the people in charge of policy don't care too much, because... because why?

¹ If someone can show me more than 5 funded NGO open content initiatives in the region, I'll revise my opinion.
² and recalled something that I was thinking of when my mind meandered to sleep last night which I have to write of...
³ Sorry, I still think that this is unethical because the broadcasters are supposed to be paying already.