By Linda Straker
Sandals LaSource is officially the most recent hotel to open its doors in Grenada, but it has now become the first property to obtain copyright clearance to use protected work throughout its 200+ room villas.
The Management of the Eastern Caribbean Collective Organisation for Music Rights, wants more hotel properties and all music users in Grenada to follow the example of Sandals LaSource and seek copyright clearance when using music for public performance.
Following negotiations, Sandals LaSource, which began operation in December 2013, became the first hotel to obtain clearance from ECCO. “We are very, very pleased that the management of Sandals LaSource understands our work and complied with Grenada’s Copyright legislation in accordance with standard practice. This is a great move, and it’s our hope that the management of other hotels, as well as owners of businesses within the hospitality sector which use music, will comply with the law,” said Steve Etienne, ECCO’s General Manager.
Since ECCO became the registered Collective Management Organisation for the Eastern Caribbean in 2009, it has engaged a wide cross-section of music users, including the Grenada Hotel and Tourism Association, radio stations and promoters, to discuss obtaining copyright clearance for public performance, but compliance is still minuscule.
“We at ECCO prefer to reach amicable solutions with users, rather than to take the route of the justice system, but in Grenada we have had to resort to the court to resolve a few matters,” Etienne said. Therefore, it’s against this background that ECCO intends to file legal action against leading music users, including hoteliers and media houses, as was recently done by the Jamaica Association of Authors, Composers and Publishers. That Society recently took several media houses before the Supreme Court on charges of breaches of the 1993 Jamaica copyright laws.
“By obtaining copyright clearance, the Sandals LaSource management is respecting the work of those we represent within the creative industry sector, and they need to be applauded for such positive corporate responsibility in Grenada,” he added.
The Eastern Caribbean Collective Organisation for Music Rights (ECCO) Inc. is a society of writers & publishers of music. Through reciprocal agreements with Collective Management Organisations (CMOs), throughout the world (also called ‘societies’), ECCO represents and can license virtually the whole worldwide repertoire of copyright music for public performance, broadcast, cable transmission, online and mobile use. In addition, ECCO will also license mechanical reproduction and synchronization rights on behalf of writer and publisher members, and is planning a perform a similar task for the related rights of producers and performers with respect to the right of equitable remuneration when recordings are used in broadcasts and/or public performances.
