I came across a recent article on India’s attempt to step up the fight against piracy. Articles on piracy or efforts to curb it are certainly not rare. I’ve personally heard it being debated and discussed ad nauseum at numerous public and private fora. This time though, it stirred a little bit more interest in me than before.
Admittedly, one of the reasons for this might be that I’ve been reading the book “Hot Property” by Pat Choate. The book gives some interesting perspectives on piracy and counterfeit goods and statistics on the impact that these have on our daily lives (including the health and safety of people). It also traces the history of piracy and intellectual property protection in the United Sates, Germany, Japan and China. While I am yet to read all the chapters, a few thoughts came to mind which I express here for open public comment and discussion.
As I see it, piracy continues to be big at least in part because we the public, don’t see it as a real problem. Too few of us feel the threat of personal injured (financially, mentally, emotionally or physically) resulting from piracy. Au contraire, many of us may even be secretly grateful that there is rampant piracy at least in the software and music industries – how else could most of us afford to buy any of the software that we now rely on so heavily, or have all the music we want to listen to?
In the book, Pat Choate traces the approach of many countries towards intellectual property protection. It was not entirely surprising to read that “Literary piracy remained U.S. policy till 1891….” In fact, until as recently as 1986, “[US] Congress confined copyright protections of foreign works to those manufactured in the United States…” Eventually, stringent intellectual property rights protections for copyrighted works was introduced only after there was a demand for it within the United States with American authors wanting protection of their works outside the United States. (Most countries refused protection of US works unless there was reciprocal protection for the works of their authors in the US.)
An interesting observation by Microsoft’s legal head Rakesh Bakshi, echoes Pat Choate’s observations: “It is frustrating not just for multinationals like Microsoft, it’s also frustrating for Indian companies….[b]ut the problem will only be resolved once Indian companies realise that piracy also affects them. China is an interesting example of this for many reasons. A few years ago, China was known for counterfeit and pirated goods. But then China realised that its home-grown companies were quite good in IT, so they needed to make a change. Now China still has a higher rate of piracy than India – but they’ve seen a 6-7% drop in piracy levels, in comparison to 2- 3% in India.”
Aysha’s recent post also suggests this mixed sentiment almost all nations have towards the broader issue of piracy. While we feel a deep sense of resentment when we hear of instances of biopiracy, piracy of our traditional knowledge and hijacking (if I may be allowed a misusage of term) of our Geographical indications, we remain largely unshaken at the statistics of music and/or software piracy. Can we really label this tendency as good or bad? Or is it simply a fact – countries are concerned primarily with their own interest; globalization not withstanding.
In business reality terms however, even in the realm of software and music piracy prevention, India as a nation is, now more than ever, an interested party. Just how interested?:
(1) Not just large established companies such as Infosys, but also smaller companies are now creating software and demanding IP rights. One of my clients, a software company based in Gurgaon, recently finalized an MoU with a company in New Jersey for marketing its proprietary software in the United States; the company was started just a few years ago!
(2) Actors such as Amir Khan have been known to be strong advocates against piracy. As Indian movies and music become more popular offshore, we have a big interest in giving real protection to foreign works to ensure continued protection for the “Made in India.”
(3) Recent years have seen the Indian courts show growing concern and willingness to enforce intellectual property rights. Orders such as John Doe orders which were unknown in India are now talked about in the media and is a viable and available option to crack down unidentified defendants dealing with pirated or infringing goods.
(4) Large scale efforts to educate the judiciary are also underway; the National Judicial Academy in Bhopal has set up intellectual property law training programs for judges in high courts and district courts.
Being brought up in an environment that taught me that change should begin at the level of the individual, my question to everyone is, (1) do we as individuals want to contribute to the fight against piracy? If yes, (2) what are the practical ways in which we can do this? In the coming weeks, it might be fun to share ideas and maybe come up with a “Practical Solutions to Piracy” list! 🙂
dear mrinalini you are to some extent correct.however the companies(either
music/ software) are also to be blamed to extent.1st software.. tell me whether every indian who runs thier pc’s on windows xp does completely use all of
xp’s cpabilities.unless one reads computer magazines or is a geek one cannot know all the features.there lies the mistake of software companies.they try to sell software with lots of capabilities to ordinary mortals with ordinary requirements.for example even though win98 is fine for ones requirement one has to buy
win xp just because win98 is no more sold by MS.and after sometime all branded computers will be bundled with vista,thus depriving customers of choice buying what he needs.btw my digital camera supports only windows xp /macintosh ..no support for LINUX!!it even doesnot support legal win xp ,upgraded from legal win98..
Music/cinema :moserbaer reecently
stated that cinema industry is not
allowing DVD’S of newly released movies.the producersrs think that watching a movie at a theatre is convinient rather than at your house.similarly music companies think that you will be interested in the album where as you may be interested in a single track..if these companies want piracy to go
they sholud know the consumers needs, and not their needs..by and large even Economist suggested the same some timeback.
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In my humble opinion – the illegal market contributes to the expansion of the legal market. We should be focusing on Practical Solutions to promoting Piracy!
Please see:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070901-movie-biz-obsesses-about-pirates-even-as-it-plunders-the-box-office.html
http://www.mediabynumbers.com/userfiles/file/Media%20By%20Numbers%20Summer%20Movie%20Statistics(2).pdf
Best wishes,
Sunil
Hi Ravi and Sunil
Thanks so much for your comments. It is really encouraging to see that the post on piracy is of interest to the public as well as to lawyers.
First, Ravi’s comment: I agree completely! In fact, not long ago, I was having this discussion with my sister… I was saying, if only Microsoft would bring its prices down…. if the general public had the option of buying the original for say Rs. 1000 v. the pirated copy for Rs. 200, many would choose to buy the original. But because the original is often 20 times more expensive, the option of buying it often does not suggest itself to the buyers. The idea of unbundling the functions and maybe having charges based on the number of functions the user wants is also an excellent and very practical idea. I think we are now on our way to creating a list of ideas not only for ourselves, but also for the big companies out there… 🙂 Keep the ideas coming!
Sunil, I looked at both the links you suggested. Indeed, there is no doubt that the profits of the entertainment industry are on the rise despite piracy. But I didn’t exactly understand how piracy is contributing to the profits. I would be interested in understanding your thought process better.
Thanks guys… please keep the comments coming. I hope to compile all the comments and suggestions and post them on the blog for all our readers.
M
Ms Mrinalini Your post on do we care about Piracy was very interesting and really made me think about the solutions for curbing Piracy in software’s. I have come up with some solutions.
Software
Genuine: – Whenever we buy a Genuine Software we get a key with it, once we insert the key it gets validates by the server of the software manufacture.
Fake: – A trail version of the software is downloaded from the Internet and then a crack is inserted to make the trail version into a full version. If the genuine software is on a CD or DVD then these CD or DVD cannot be copied as they have a encoding so Image mounting software like ISO is used.
Solution: – Most of these cracks for software are available from the Internet, these sites where postings of cracks are done should be monitored and the cracks posted on these sites should be invalidated from the server of the software manufacturer so when a person validates his software through the company’s server it gets blocked or a software which acts like a crawling spider which Google uses to updates millions of WebPages being uploaded on the Internet, this software crawls through the web and finds out any changes and updates the servers with new information if such a software is used it will be quite easy to monitor such posts being uploaded, crack sites should be banned by search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN from their search list and ICANN should also not register sites having cracks in their Domain Names.
With regards to Image mounting software they should be either banned or not made available commercially. Image mounting software is used only when there is a copyright material on a CD or DVD as only these will be encoded and Image mounting software are bound to be used for copying Copyrighted Material.
Another problem being faced by the software industry is peer to peer software like LimeWire almost all the software being uploaded on it are copyrighted material the only solution in these case I can think about is to request Networks like Gnutella network on which most of the peer to peer software’s operate to Monitor copyrighted material being uploaded on the Internet which I know is going to be very difficult another option is to make users sign a Click Wrap Agreement before they upload that they are not uploading any copyrighted content.
Music and Movies
Data from Original DVD and CD cannot be directly copied so ripper software’s are used to rip Movies and Music from original DVD and CD such software’s should be banned or not commercially made available.
These are just solutions to reduce the amount of piracy, piracy as whole cannot be eradicated, and for that people have to refrain from using pirated software.
—
Ajay Chandru
Gujarat National Law University
Bsc, LLB (Hons)
Seventh Semester
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813.html
“The study then took a surprising twist. Popular music will often have both high downloads and high sales figures, so what the researchers wanted was a way to test for effects on albums sales when file-sharing activity was increased on account of something other than US song popularity.”
I have been looking at leaked albums specifically. See: http://del.icio.us/golisoda/leaked
Even though albums are leaking one month before the official lauch date on high profile torrent sites – the artist seem to be outdoing their previous release on the charts. Some of the record labels have started leaking albums on purpose. And television studios are following suit. See: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/03/warner-tv-person-i-d.html
So it looks like the industry, artists and fans are happy with piracy. Enlightened corporations are even giving up DRM. So only lawyers and lobbyists are complaining about piracy these days.
See: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2094/125/
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2097/125/
Sunil Abraham
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilaabraham
I can see where Sunil is coming from. Some amount of piracy will help boost sales of the branded product and/or help familiarise the product to consumer. SAP is a fine example of what zero piracy does!!
When SAP entered India, it wanted to ensure that there were no pirated copies of its software at all. And a highly aggressive campaign right at the start ensured that it achieved this result within a year of entering. Howevever, much to its surprise, the market for its software wasn’t picking. The hard lesson learnt: had they permitted some piracy or turned a blind eye, cheaper copies at training institutes etc would have increased familiarity with software and helped with its uptake. However, I’m not sure what level of piracy is optimal. Forgive me for being conservative, but at some stage, piracy will clearly harm the copyright owner. Perhaps we need a “middle path” approach here as well!!!
Shamnad, good to hear your thoughts on this. However, I think you mean ‘proprietary product’ and not ‘branded product’. FOSS projects are very concerned about their brands and will use lawyers to defend them.
For example:
http://plone.org/foundation/committees/trademark/info/
Also, I think you mean ‘lots of piracy’ and not ‘some piracy’.
“In more than half of the 102 countries studied, the piracy rate exceeded 60%. In approximately one third of the countries, the piracy rate exceeded 75%.”
http://w3.bsa.org/india/press/newsreleases/2007-global-piracy-study.cfm
Currently, I am in Chişinău, working with the Government of Moldova [according to BSA – 94% piracy here] on a FOSS and Open Standards policy document. This is in response to sabre rattling by BSA here.
See: http://www.undp.md/employment/2007/Nat_con_E-Gov/TOR-National%20consultant-OS-%20Final.pdf
Proprietary software companies who harrass their ‘potential customers’ should realize that it only makes life easier for us FOSS advocates 😉
Best,
Sunil
Good that this discussion is going on, My own work has been on understanding media piracy in India, and my sense is that the debate is boring when you only examine in it in terms of legality. A more useful entry point for those interested in the link between IP and Public interest is the ‘public interest’ question.
Media Scholars like Peter Manuel, Shujen Wang, Nitin Govil, Brian Larkin have provided us with rich descritptions of the media transformations and cultural dioversity brought about by Media piracy, and it is important to contrast these with the knee jerk
responses of loss and damage that we find emanating from the media industry.
Dear Sunil,
You’re right. Having been caught up in pharma debates for too long, I use “branded” in the same sense we use this in pharma debates i.e. proprietory stuff. However, I’m not sure that I’d use FOSS branding as a counter-example here. FOSS is not pirated stuff, is it? Of course, even pirated stuff can be branded and to that extent, you’re right that we should use an alternative term such as “proprietory”.
However, citing FOSS branding for this seems to suggest that FOSS stuff is pirated. Your later example of Moldova also seems to suggest that you use FOSS as synonymous with pirated. Is that so? Am I missing something here?
And why do you say “lots of piracy”? Yes, all your examples including BSA point to high levels of piracy. But is this necessarily a good thing? I’m not convinced either way–till I see some good literature—not mere rhetoric but carefully thought out arguments, with data, if possible.
Is there any such good literature out there that speaks to such high levels and suggests that it’s either good or bad. Of course, good and bad can be contextual and relative and I like Lawrence’s post about having to look at the other non legal dimensions. If the literature does say its a good thing (for whatever reasons), does it go one step further and advocate for the complete abolishment of copyright?
Thanks