13190: McAlister on copyright (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Elizabeth McAlister <emcalister@mail.wesleyan.edu>


Copyright infringement is a norm in the diaspora as well as inside
Haiti.  Just last week I bought, in Spring Valley, NY, among other
things, a bootleg video of the RAM concert televised on Haitian TV in
2001 (nice job, RAM; the music was jammin').  I also bought some
bootleg Haitian films and the soap opera Pe Toma, as well as some
properly packaged cds.  I was sorry to participate in this bootleg
economy, but as a consumer (and anthropologist) I wanted the goods
and they were not all available in their original royalty-producing
form.  I notice that many shops make most of their income reproducing
and selling bootlegged cultural material. The storeowner assumed I
wanted bootlegs, and only when I was paying did he ask, for some
materials, "oh, do you want the original?" (Jean-Jean, you know this
place.)  This systemic practice allows folks to get meaningful
cultural materials away from "home," but it doesn't compensate the
artists and producers.

That particular shop had a poster of the Haitian supermodel, Tyrone
Edmonds, wearing a Haitian flag on his head.  I offered to pay
whatever the shopkeeper wanted, but he wouldn't sell.  Does anybody
have such a poster?  I am researching Edmonds (no, really!) and I am
looking for this image of him!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Elizabeth McAlister, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Religion
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT  06459-0029, USA
Tel:  (860) 685-2289
Fax:  (860) 685-2821
Internet home page: http://www.wesleyan.edu/religion/mcalister.htm
Rara book page:  http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9291.html

Faculty Research Fellow
Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion
Yale University
New Haven, CT  06520, USA

*************************