In Jamaica, unlike Britain, America and Europe, laws of authorship, copyright and ownership, were a little less rigorously observed. Such laws and conventions and a large amount of music would be copied or just bootlegged by whoever had the inclination to do so. A song or an artist could, and frequently did, crop up on several different labels simultaneously. The difference was that in many cases any problems were resolved within the community and not by the intervention of lawyer's or the state. This approach was valuable in keeping the fruits of the peoples labor within that community and consequently it (the music) did not, for a long time, become part of  the ideological state apparatus.

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