Hollywood, Bollywood tying up to fight piracy

There are reports that Hollywood and Bollywood are launching a joint initiative against piracy in India. The MPAA on behalf of Hollywood, and seven Indian companies have decided to join together to fight counterfeiting of film copyrights. Indeed, with one of the largest movie industries in the world, there is certainly a large problem of copyright infringement, with nearly all released movies being made available illegally.

While its applaudable that they are striving harder to recognize and protect copyrights, this is a path that must be tread carefully. After all, the MPAA (along with the RIAA) is notorious for having taken a variety of ‘overkill’ steps in the US including showing the US Congress falsely inflated numbers of Piracy, arguing that infringement proof shouldn’t be required for collecting damages, and of course it’s 8 year battle against the VCR with claims that it would end the movie industry, amongst other things.

While their (supposed) intentions may be noble, it is important to ensure that similar mistakes in means to this end are not made. I repeat this point due to the history that there is regarding how this has been gone about in the past.

For instance, The Associated Press reports that “Piracy cost India’s $2.3 billion film industry $959 million and 571,000 jobs in 2008, according to an Ernst & Young study, and pirated DVDs account for 60 percent of the market, according to KPMG.” [For our regular readers, this is the quote I was referring to in the previous post regarding iCopyright!]

While I agree that infringement of copyright is a definite problem which needs to be addressed, I have issues with how such numbers are concluded. I was unable to find a copy of the report, but generally speaking, how these estimates are arrived at is by looking at the size of the ‘pirated market’ which IS NOT an indicator of the losses that the industry would’ve made.

That is similar to comparing free samples given out to the same products sold. The difference between piracy and such a free sample give out marketing gimmick is essentially that the supply of the product is regulated/limited when it is legal. Otherwise, the comparison shows us that many people not otherwise interested in buying the product are willing to take a free sample just to test it out. This does not mean they would’ve bought it had it not been free (or substantially cheaper). Also, as the existence of such a marketing practice shows, this free sampling helps the product gain visibility. Thus, looking at the size of the pirated market, completely distorts what the actual losses may have been. Similarly, I am very curious as to how the rates of unemployment are arrived at. After all, even pirated DVDs require distributors and a distribution process. (Is the problem then, that there is not enough incentive to stay in, or even get in, the white market/legit industry? If so, this possibly seems like another problem altogether? I welcome readers thoughts and comments on this.)

There are already some statements I find confusing being made by the coalition of Indian companies and the MPAA. According to this site, Rajiv Dalal of the Motion Picture Associations India office was quoted as saying, “Piracy is not a victimless crime. The RAND report on Film Piracy, Organised Crime and Terrorism has clearly demonstrated that film piracy funds terrorist activity. As such, states need to take this menace seriously and place film piracy offences under organised crime statutes like Maharashtra did in 2009,”

At the same time, according to TOI, speaking on the issue of piracy, MPAA chairman Dan Glickman was quoted saying, “Free is great and everybody likes things for free. In a civilised society, we need to pay for products and services. I believe that as an industry, if we offer people products at reasonable prices in a hassle free manner, people will not steal.”

I fully agree with the latter part of his statement and agree that this is the way forward in the light of the digital world. However, coming to the former part of it – if people are getting films for free, where is the funding of the terrorist activity mentioned earlier? Indeed, other reports quoted by them go on to say that the majority of sharing is by online file-sharing, ie, free. It might be better to take stands that aren’t contradicted by another statement from within the coalition itself. I find an approach of throwing everything, and seeing what sticks, a kind of logically lacking approach to lobbying for change/enforcement.

Having said that, I would like to emphasise on the importance of contextualizing copyright enforcement and the copyright regime in general, and not blindly following others in this dynamic and quickly changing scenario of copyright law. After all, as the largest producers of movies, and being in a developing economy, does it make sense to follow the norms settled down by a movie industry which ignored piracy during its own origins and formative years (yes! Hollywood, and even America’s music industry was in fact started due to piracy. See here) but now, being based in a developed economy, seek to impose the same way it has of working on other developing economies such as ours? For us to follow them at this later stage, without considering how they got to this place might prove to be detrimental.

Certainly, I’m not saying that we too should pirate, but rather, that we should be careful while jumping onto their bandwagon now, for it may not be one which is in our best interest. Instead, I would again, look towards the latter bit of Dan Glickman’s statement as one to show the way forward: “I believe that as an industry, if we offer people products at reasonable prices in a hassle free manner, people will not steal.”