In an attempt to introduce stricter control mechanisms within the telecommunications sector, the Government has decided to join with regional counterparts to harness the growth of the sector which continues to grow exponentially in which not all the players are always on the same page.
According to the Minister of Public Administration and Communications, Maxie Cuffie, the theme of Broadcasting Licensing in the Digital Age is paradoxical in nature as it is one which has seen the concept of free-to-air “being increasingly replaced by the free-for-all that currently obtains in cyber space.”
Delivering the feature address at the opening of a two-day workshop at the Telecommunications Authority of T&T (TATT) yesterday, Cuffie said the situation that currently obtained had placed regulators at a distinct disadvantage as they sought to bring “sanity and method to the levels of irresponsibility that abound in the sector.”
He said that was further compounded by society which had a rich and long history of unbridled speech.
Cuffie said the digital age had been responsible for irreparably damaging the lives of innocent citizens as persons with the ability to broadcast material that was sexually explicit, compromising or containing untruths, through the simple act of pushing a button on a smart device.
Citing the recent case in which a young attorney was wrongly identified as the complainant in the alleged rape case involving president of the Public Services Association Watson Duke, Cuffie asked: “How does she recover from that unwarranted expose on her otherwise apparently sheltered life?”
He said while that was only a side of the coin, there was also the reverse position of “absolute laxity, where others believe that regulators like TATT should be so stringent in their application and enforcement of all broadcast laws, that the slightest of infractions should result in the immediate revocation of licences or the imposition of hefty fines.”
Celebrating the removal of T&T from the US Trade Representative watch list, Cuffie said the 2016 Special 301 Report clearly attributed that development to the work done by TATT.
Quoting from the report, Cuffie said TATT had taken concrete steps to enforce its concession agreements which required broadcasters to respect intellectual property rights by acquiring permission from the owners of the material prior to it being broadcast.
The minister said after listening to arguments from both sides, there had to be balance as he acknowledged that the attention paid to regulating online content was “disproportionate” to that paid to the content of newspapers and the publishing sector.
He added: “The idea seems to be that all regulation and any state intervention are undesirable and seen as a threat to and violation of press freedoms and that citizens should be able to freely decide for themselves which content in newspapers and books they consume.
“The hands off approach for print media stands in sharp contrast to the regulatory burden on broadcasting.”
He said it was now a question of how far the relevant authorities should go with broadcasting licensing or if it was too late as the proverbial horse of free broadband connectivity, cloud computing, instant messaging and expensive mobile penetration, had already bolted.
Cuffie said while broadcasting was currently undergoing its biggest period of change since the arrival of television, he added T&T was teetering on the cusp of an information age in which all technologies were converging into one market.
Participants included officials from organisations, such as the Ministry of the Attorney General Intellectual Property Office; TATT; the Caribbean Broadcasting Union; Caricom and the World Intellectual Property Organisation.