|
NEW DELHI: The inadequacies in the war against piracy and
counterfeit became evident at the Ficci seminar on the issue
when the Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy, H K Dua
clarified that an inter-ministerial group to combat piracy
has been formed two months ago, though the chairperson of
the government's Core Group, film actress Shabana Azmi, was
unaware of it till then.
Delivering her key note address, Azmi had expressed sadness
that the Core Group's recommendations - especially that of setting
up the inter-ministerial group - had been made months ago but
nothing has been heard of that.
A little later, addressing the audience, Dua said it has in
fact been set up and work was going on, though he admitted:
"Work has started, but it remains incomplete."
Central to a proposed action plan presented by Azmi was involving
children, which has paid off very well in tackling issues
like global warming and fight against plastics. Azmi said
that during a school presentation against piracy, she had
symbolically crushed hundreds of fake DVDs under a bulldozer
she drove herself.
"Children loved that, but unfortunately, when the same
students were asked to write an essay on the subject, they
responded very poorly," Azmi despaired.
She explained that the children could not be faulted because
neither teachers nor parents adequately understood the issue,
and said that the need was to underline the word counterfeit
as an act of theft and as vile an act as any other criminal
offence.
Azmi made an emotional approach that would work if children
understood that parents buying counterfeit material were encouraging
thieves, and called for a widespread campaign on these lines.
Azmi was candid, however, to mention that though creative
artists like her, music makers, lyricists and filmmakers and
producers are the hardest hit by counterfeit, yet, Bollywood
was guilty of never making a concerted and sustained campaign
on the issue.
Azmi revealed also that among the other measures suggested
by the Core Group were setting up a complete digital cinema
environment, and that the Group had demanded tax holidays
and 100 per cent depreciation for the digital cinema industry.
It may be recalled that Ficci itself had in its prebudget
wish list had stressed creating digital cinema environment
and demanded several benign tax measures for that, but after
the budget proposals, slammed them as "There is nothing
in it for us".
Thus far goes the finance ministries commitment to protect
Indian media industry against piracy, for nothing has been
done so far in remodelling tax structures to incorporate the
demands of the industry.
Azmi said that another recommendation of the Group was that
copyright laws must embrace digital download access, so that
people could access legitimate content at affordable prices.
Dua did not clarify the government position on these other
two issues.
However, he said that while there was once a situation when
India did not have adequate legal teeth to tackle the problem
of piracy, this is not the case today.
Listing the various recent legislations and amendments to
older ones tackling piracy, Dua said: "There are adequate
laws but not adequate action."
He stressed that the action has to be at the states level,
where the illegal activities take place, and regretted that
even now, state police forces treat piracy complaints as a
civil matter and comes last in their prioritisation, after
maintaining law and order and dealing with crime.
Piracy is not taken as a serious offence by the police, though
it is killing off legitimate industries and hurting people
employed in them.
"This is murder, but economic murder, theft, but not
of property, but something even deeper, the source of property,"
he said, adding that if a mere 10 per cent of piracy in the
IT sector could be reduced, it would save the country five
billion dollars and protect 1,15,000 jobs.
He spoke also of the indirect and not so visible implications
of piracy. "Once black money is generated, it has to
be sued somewhere, so there is more counterfeiting and the
link of all sorts of illegal activities add up to funding
for terrorism as well.
Dua said that the major charter of the inter-ministerial
group has been enforcement at the state level.
Dua also revealed that though US and other countries are
accusing India, China, etc., of pirating their IPR products,
the government had pointed out to the US trade representative
during her recent visit to India that Indian films were getting
pirated in the US too, and they need to do something about
it.
There was a demand that dedicated cells to tackle piracy
issues must be set up within the police forces in the states
because the regular forces are too stretched to handle this
specialised criminal offence.
Dua clarified on this issue that the inter-ministerial group
had stressed an Intellectual Property Cell in every state,
to be headed by the IP secretary concerned, and added that
programmes for piracy-related training of judicial officials
and police personnel have been started already.
Speaking for Ficci, V K Topa said that workshops for judges
have already been held at Kolkata, Delhi and Bhopal and there
is another one coming up in June in Bangalore.
Ficci is also working with Kolkata High Court to probe the
possibilities of setting up special anti-piracy courts which
could fast-track the judicial process and hand out swift and
exemplary punishments to offenders.
In his vote of thanks, V J Lazarus of India Music Industry
said that the government has been extraordinary in its support
for the movement, and it is now time for industry to do whatever
it could to make the war a complete victory.
| 
