In an interesting document published on its website, available over
here, the U.S. India Business Council (USIBC), a business advocacy organization, has described in detail its lobbying efforts with officials of the Government of India (GoI) as also the U.S. Embassy, to increase the level of IP protection in India. Normally ‘lobbying’ is a shady business in India, as proved by the
Radia tapes and it is therefore quite interesting to note that USIBC has published this information in such a transparent manner. Hopefully the Indian Government, especially the Copyright Office (against whom a
Complaint is being filed with the Central Information Commission) could learn a thing or two about transparency from the USIBC. I’m quite sure that a lot of people will take objection to this lobbying effort but let’s not forget that both the Indian Government and business houses
spend millions of dollars on lobbying firms in Washington D.C. What goes around comes around – it’s all karma I say!
Getting back to the USIBC’s lobbying efforts, the document details the names and positions of all government officials who were contacted by representatives of the USIBC. These officials are as follows:
(i) Dr. J. S. Sarma, Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India: The USIBC requested that TRAI emulate the U.S. Government in its efforts to seize entire websites alleged to be dealing in counterfeit or pirated material. We had blogged about these efforts of the U.S. Government over
here.
(ii) Meeting with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting: Mr. Rajiv Takru, Additional Secretary; Mr. D.P. Reddy, Joint Secretary (Films) and Mr. Amitab Kumar, Director (Films) to lobby for increased penalties against camcorder piracy and other issues pertaining to the entertainment industry.
(iii) Meeting with JS Prasad of Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion; GR Raghavendra, Director & Registrar of Copyrights, Copyright Division, Ministry of Human Resource Development; and Deputy Secretary of Ministry of Information & Broadcasting: The USIBC was of the opinion that the Copyright Amendments currently pending before Parliament are not WIPO compliant. The USIBC also requested more action against online piracy.
(iv) Meeting with Secretary R. Chandrashekhar, Secretary of the Department for Information Technology: Internet piracy and other issues were raised once again.
(v) Meeting with Dr. Gulshan Rai, Director General, Department of IT, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology: USIBC requested further consultations on Sections 43 & 79 of the IT Act Amendments. They also submitted this
note on the IT Amendment Act.
(vi) Meeting with Sachin Pilot, Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology: USIBC once again requested for stronger action against websites, carrying pirated content, including domain name seizures.
In addition the USIBC also details its meeting with the US Embassy staff. The meeting with Ms. Kalpana Reddy, IPR Attache U.S. Embassy is particularly interesting because it notes that the U.S. Government had submitted written comments to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Copyright Amendment Bill. The note also claims that some of the recommendations were accepted by the Standing Committee – this is surprising because the Standing Committee Report does not mention this at any point. Apparently, according to the note, the U.S. Government is still trying to influence the Government of India on the language of the amendments.
We could think of asking the Copyright Office for details on the actual concerns of the U.S. Government but given my past experience with them I doubt whether we could get any of these details from the Copyright Office.
In an interesting document published on its website, available over here, the U.S. India Business Council (USIBC), a business advocacy organization, has described in detail its lobbying efforts with officials of the Government of India (GoI) as also the U.S. Embassy, to increase the level of IP protection in India. Normally ‘lobbying’ is a shady business in India, as proved by the Radia tapes and it is therefore quite interesting to note that USIBC has published this information in such a transparent manner. Hopefully the Indian Government, especially the Copyright Office (against whom a Complaint is being filed with the Central Information Commission) could learn a thing or two about transparency from the USIBC. I’m quite sure that a lot of people will take objection to this lobbying effort but let’s not forget that both the Indian Government and business houses spend millions of dollars on lobbying firms in Washington D.C. What goes around comes around – it’s all karma I say!