Siddharth Chadha

Special ‘301’ Reports

The ‘Special 301 Reports’ are published annually by the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to examine ‘in detail the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights protection’ in countries around the globe. Sections 301-310 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, empower the USTR ‘to identify foreign countries that deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights or fair and equitable market access for U.S. persons that rely on intellectual property protection.’    

India has faced considerable pressure to amend and enforce its copyright laws, more to the needs of the United States rather than reflecting the needs of its population, businesses and innovation. The 301 reports over the last decade have been largely concerned with the general problems of counterfeit and piracy in India, unlike China where specific laws adopted and enforced by the state have been critiqued. Over the course of the decade, according to the reports, the United States has been concerned with a large number of subjects including the backlog and inadequacy of India’s legal system, lack of enforcement of IP protections for media oriented products like ‘motion pictures, music, software, books and video games’, need for stronger protection of copyrights, trademarks and patents, optical media and procedural inadequacies. In 2004 the USTR reported, ‘copyright piracy is rampant, and the U.S. copyright industry estimates that lost sales resulting from piracy in India of U.S. motion pictures, sound recordings, musical compositions, computer programmes, and books totaled approximately $500 million in 2004.’

The United States articulates the reasons for concern in India – the challenge posed by Indian pirated and counterfeit goods entering American markets. It expresses its concern for lack of piracy enforcement as ‘‘growing concern for U.S. copyright industries, especially given the pirated imports are entering the market from Southeast Asia.

Over the past few years, it has also included suggestions of taking criminal action against those engaging in copyright infringement. India’s supposed ‘weak’ criminal system is mentioned in the 2008 reports, focused specifically on the need for a greater police presence enforcing IPR infringements through criminal means and ‘stronger’ border control.

The Effects of Counterfeiting and Piracy on India’s Entertainment Industry

Published in March 2009 by United States-India Business Council (USIBC) and prepared by Ernst and Young India, claims that as much as Rs.16, 000 crores are lost due to piracy. Alongside, as many as 80,000 jobs are lost directly as a result of theft and piracy, afflicting India’s entertainment industry. This report was commissioned as a part of the USIBC–FICCI Bollywood–Hollywood initiative and covered film, music, television and video games. It was funded by the Global Intellectual Property Center of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The spectacular press launch meeting was organized in Mumbai and also attended by Yash Chopra, chairman of FICCI Frames and Ramesh Sippy, the famed director who commented on the occasion, “I know first hand the importance of fighting piracy to support the growth of Bollywood. I commend the USIBC–FICCI initiative for enlisting all elements of the entertainment industry against piracy.” The President of USIBC, Ron Summers used the opportunity to suggest stronger legal means to tackle piracy. He said, “We strongly support passage by India of optical disc legislation that will thwart piracy in this important industry. We are pleased to stand shoulder to shoulder with counterparts in India to help protect jobs and revenues that are now being needlessly lost to piracy.”

Sixth Annual BSA and IDC Global Software Piracy Study

Business Software Alliance, in partnership with a market analysis firm IDC, published their annual study on global trends in software piracy in May 2009. Sixth in its annual series, the report critically blames the Asia Pacific region, especially India and China, for the growing levels in piracy, despite countries bringing down their piracy rates. The report says, ‘In 2008, the rate of PC software piracy dropped in slightly more than half (57) of the 110 countries studied, remained the same in nearly one third (36), and rose in just 16. However, the worldwide PC software piracy rate rose for the second year in a row, from 38 per cent to 41 per cent, mainly because PC shipments grew fastest in high-piracy countries such as China and India, overwhelming progress in these and other countries.’

In addition, it also makes an India specific point by highlighting India’s piracy trends,

‘India’s rate has dropped six points in five years, despite its sprawling PC market, of which consumers and small businesses account for 65 per cent. While consumer PC shipments grew more than 10 per cent last year, shipments to other categories dropped 7 per cent.’

Motion Pictures Distributors Association’s Internet Piracy Studies

Earlier this month, the MPA Office in India named Motion Pictures Distributors Association, along with a DtecNet a global anti-piracy company, released a study on the Internet piracy trends in India. This report places India as the fourth largest global hub of online film piracy, behind United States, Britain and Canada, with Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai accounting for the major share of illegal downloads. It estimates that Vishal Bhardwaj’s Kaminey, was downloaded 350, 000 times on Bit Torrent with about 2/3rds of downloaders being from India. MPDA also links this study to another consultancy, Envisional’s similar suggestions, while MPDA’s managing director, Rajiv Dalal pushed for strong laws to support copyright, strong enforcement and stiff sentences for people who violate laws, on the basis of these reports.

Despite the availability of a large number of critiques available in the academic world, the media – both broadcast and print, reports shock inducing statistics verbatim, treating them as expert evidence without engaging in any analysis of the published material. Most of the piracy studies are quantitative in nature and do not provide any social class or demographic break up either of those who engage in piracy or those who buy pirated goods. It has also been pointed out by scholars like Shujen Wang that it is unreasonable to assume that every pirated copy could be counted as a lost sale, and thus a loss. In absence of research on the cultural aspects of piracy and the subsequent circulation, these reports have been successful in creating a fear psychosis in the civil society.

International Intellectual Property Alliance

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) is an international lobby group of US media industries with close ties to the United States Trade Representative. It has in its reports consistently expressed dissatisfaction with Indian efforts to deal with piracy.  IIPA works in close cooperation the other US lobby groups like the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the BSA (Business Software Alliance). The IIPA reports, which place India in a 'danger zone', significantly influence regional and international discourses on piracy.  Interestingly, the IIPA in India has been very successful in regionalizing and nationalizing a global discourse. Thus, in the past few years, local industry associations in India in cinema, music and software have independently run highly emotional campaigns against piracy, reminiscent of IIPA's own campaigns. 

Motion Pictures Association

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) through its international counterpart, Motion Pictures Association (MPA), has been unofficially operational in India for the last 15 years. Its member companies are Walt Disney, Paramount, Sony Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Bros. The MPA's work in India was mostly non-obtrusive till 1994 when MPA Asia-Pacific, based in Singapore, started being represented by the high profile legal firm Lall & Sethi Advocates.

They have collectively worked on forming enforcement teams for coordinated raids in Mumbai and Delhi since 1995. Earlier this year, MPA announced its first India office to be set up in Mumbai, called the Motion Picture Distributor's Association India (Pvt.) Limited (MPDA), under the directorship of Rajiv Dalal.  Mr. Dalal had previously directed strategic initiatives from the MPAA's Los Angeles office.  The MPDA will engage itself in working jointly with local Indian film industries and the Indian government to promote the protection of motion pictures and television rights. 

According to the organization's own assertion, in 2006 the MPA's Asia-Pacific operation investigated more than 30,000 cases of piracy and assisted law enforcement officials in conducting nearly 12,400 raids. These activities resulted in the seizure of more than 35 million illegal optical discs, 50 factory optical disc production lines and 4,482 optical disc burners, as well as the initiation of more than 11,000 legal actions.

Indian Music Industry

The world's second-oldest music companies' association, Indian Music Industry (IMI), was first established as Indian Phonographic Industry in 1936. It was re-formed in its present avatar in 1994, as a non-commercial and non-profit organization affiliated to the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and is registered as a society in West Bengal. IMI members includes major record companies like Saregama, HMV, Universal Music (India), Tips, Venus, Sony BMG (India), Crescendo, Virgin Records, Magnasound, Milestone, Times Music and several other prominent national and regional labels that represent over 75 per cent of the output in corporate recordings.

It was one of the first organizations in the country to start the trend of hiring ex-police officers to lead anti-piracy operations. In 1996, IMI hired Julio Ribeiro (a former Commissioner of Police, Mumbai; Director General of Police, Punjab; and Indian Ambassador to Romania) to head its anti-piracy operations. Their anti-piracy work is split into three specific regions, North and North Eastern, Western and Southern and East, each zone headed by a former senior police officer. IMI operates through offices in Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and several other cities and towns across India, focusing on surveillance, law enforcement, and gathering intelligence through an 80 member team hired to tackle piracy. During 2001 to 2004, IMI registered over 5500 cases, seized over 10 lakh music cassettes, and around 25 lakh CDs.

Business Software Alliance

Headquartered in Washington DC, the Business Software Alliance has a regional office in Delhi, and has been instrumental in conducting anti-piracy operations across the country. According to the BSA, India ranks 20 in global software piracy rankings, with a rate of 73 per cent while the Asia Pacific average is 53 per cent. China ranks second with a rate of 92 per cent and annual losses of $3,823 million while Pakistan ranks nine with 83 per cent piracy rate. They have engaged the general public in providing them with information on pirated software through an anti-piracy initiative – The Rewards Programme. Launched in 2005, reward amount up to Rs.50, 000, would be provided for information leading to successful legal action against companies using unlicensed software. The reward program was aimed to encourage people to support the fight against piracy and to report software piracy to the NASSCOM-BSA Anti-Piracy Software Hotline.

In 2006, BSA and NASSCOM got a shot in their arms by winning the largest settlement amount for a copyright case in India, with Netlinx India Pvt. Ltd. The case had emerged after a civil raid was conducted at the premises of Netlinx in December 2000, leading to inspection and impounding of 40 PCs, carrying illegal unlicensed software. The settlement includes damages of US$ 30,000, complete legalization of software used by them, removal of all unlicensed/pirated software and submission to an unannounced audit of computer systems during next 12 months.

Industry Enforcers

Bollywood Film and Music companies, such as T-Series and Yashraj Films, have established anti-piracy arms to combat piracy in specific markets. T-Series has been in the industry for over 15 years, as a brand of Gulshan Kumar founded Super Cassettes Industries Limited, and has often been at the forefront for conducting raids along with police officials to check piracy of its copyrighted content. In its latest announcement earlier this year, T-Series launched an anti-piracy campaign against those stealing digital content. The announcement came after they filed a complaint on June 1 with a police station in Mangalore against Classic Video shop for infringement of its copyright works like Billu, Ghajini, Aap Ka Suroor, Apne, Fashion and Karz that had been illegally downloaded and copied onto multiple discs, card readers and pen-drives.

Yashraj Films, a leading film studio, has long been a part of enforcement activities against piracy, both in the Indian market and internationally. Most recently, it was a key member in the formation of the United Producers and Distributors Forum, which also included chairman Mahesh Bhatt, Ramesh Sippy, Ronnie Screwalla of UTV, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Eros International. This organization is now trying to enforce anti-piracy laws by conducting raids across the country with the help of another ex-cop from Mumbai, A.A. Khan. Yashraj Films has also established anti-piracy offices in the United Kingdom and the United States to curb piracy in those markets, as overseas returns of its films, watched by the desi diaspora is one of its largest revenue earning sources. The website of Yashraj Films lists news reports from across US and Europe of instances of crackdown on pirates. 

In the context of intellectual property in the creative industries, these anti-piracy agents have successfully created the halo of illegality around the subject of piracy. The discourse on informal networks and circuits of distribution of cultural goods remains hijacked with efforts to contain piracy as the only rhetoric which safeguards the business interests of big media companies and multinational corporations.

Getting to the National Market

Wading through Majestic Bus Stand, Flea Markets, Private Bus Stops and vehicles going around in circles, you could almost miss this board outside one of the shopping plazas. NATIONAL MARKET, the famed "pirate market" at the heart of the city. Most of the business here is illegal and the local police raid the thirty odd shops selling goods, which within the purview of any multilateral agreement under WIPO or TRIPS regime would be an infringement of copyright, at least once a month. The shops run shutter to shutter, each one five by four feet. Crowded with sellers and customers, all pirate markets typically smell the same. Pirated DVDs, DVD players, Chinese mobile phones and PDAs, even VHS players of the yore, smuggled MP3 music systems, fake Ray-Bans and Police sunglasses, gaming consoles. You name it, and National Market has it.

Meet the Pirate

Tall and sporting a stubble, Sooraj (name changed) is a Malayali who has been in the trade for over 8 years. "Earlier, I used to have the best English Movie collection ever. But now, its all going away. Most people have shifted from DVD's to Digital Storage and Bit Torrents", says Sooraj. A family comes across the counter. A middle aged man accompanied by two women in a burqua, one of them carrying a young baby boy in their hand. "Tom and Jerry!", says the man and Sooraj's helper brings out a carton full of animated Hollywood films. Finding Nemo, The Lion King, Madagascar, its all there. "No Tom and Jerry. This doesn't have Tom and Jerry", growls the stout customer. Sooraj jumps into the action, hunts out a DVD from a stack and puts it on the table. "Tom and Jerry Tales - 13 episodes", reads the the outside with a classic Tom chasing Jerry picture on the cover. Satisfied, the family puts it aside and goes on to explore other popular cartoon series. In the end, the man calls for Maharathi, a recent Bollywood flick. He looks at the cover intriguingly and I decide to butt in, "Amazing movie. Just saw it last week. Great plot." The deal is seized and after a bout of bargaining over the price. As the family dissolves into the market, Sooraj turns back and says to me, "A lot of customers bargain. I get a headache. And my shop is the first one in the market, inside people operate on margins of 5-10 rupees. That just ruins everything for us. They don't think of the amount of the risk involved."

The Business of Piracy

Sooraj explains to me how Chennai is the biggest market of the South. "Chennai is a sea. You will get everything there. Once you take a dive in that ocean, it's all there." When I ask him of the chain of distribution, he says, "No one will say that I print the covers of fake DVDs or I copy prints. For me, I just call my distributor and everything comes from Chennai. I don't ask beyond that. The stock comes in the price range of 25-35-40 Rupees. Now, there is only one quality of stock. The market is dying. No one has good stock. Earlier, we used to sell DVDs for Rs.70-80. Now, there is no demand. Even the wholesale business is at a low.'' I ask him, "So what are you going to do, now that soon DVDs will be gone?" Sooraj is not flustered. "We will shut this and start a new business," he says. I quietly step back, as another customer comes asking for audio CDs. He doesn't deal in those.

Enforcement Threat

When the customer is gone, I ask him, "How often does the police raid this market?" He smiles and replies, "Not often anymore. The business is almost dead. But yes, they come sometimes. Then you are taken away and a case ensues." I decide to ask him candidly, "How many times have you been booked?" He smiles again. "5-7 times. I have a few cases pending, dates that I have to go and visit the court. They arrest you for a day but that's all they can do. After all this is not a big crime." He continues dealing with customers who have various demands for music and films. Some he sells to, he guides others to the inside shops. "I sell about a 1000 DVDs everyday. Earlier, the figure used to be much higher. Mostly English. Hindi, Tamil and Telugu too. No Kannada," he volunteers. I probe further, "Why no Kannada?" He says that that he supports protection for their own industry. "And the market price for Kannada films is appropriate. Some are Rupees 60, 90, 110. That's reasonable. We do not need to pirate it."

From Kazaa to The Pirate Bay

Little did the world of the VHS era realize in its time where the future of pirate technologies were heading to. The world's favourite music and films were quickly transferred onto optical discs as magnetic tapes went obsolete a few years before the end of the last century. Internet was soon to become the nemesis of discs, which were bulky to store and scratched easily. The first tryst with peer to peer technologies on networks sent shivers down the spine of Jack Valenti and the Motion Pictures Association of America. The speed of dissemination and distribution of content over the Internet was something the world had never seen before. The lawsuits against peer to peer networks such as Kaaza and Limewire ran into millions of dollars. Websites were shut down, but time and progress of technology could never be reversed. Bit Torrent soon became the most common protocol to transfer content over the Internet. Bit Torrent meta files themselves do not store copyrighted data. Hence, Bit Torrent itself is not illegal. However, its use to make copies of copyrighted material that contravenes laws in many countries has created many controversies, including the now famous Pirate Bay Trial in Sweden. The popularity of torrents though is not specific to the Western world. The strength of the Internet lies in its ability to generate content from any corner of the world which is then spread across the world through a web of distribution reaching many computers and granting them access to the content simultaneously.

Desi content on Torrent Networks

Desi : A term derived from Sanskrit, meaning region, province or country. It now refers to the people and culture of South Asian Diaspora.

On the most popular Bit Torrent search engines, torrentz.com, Hindi and Hindi movies are permanent search tags. Often, one would even see the names of popular Bollywood releases such as Dev D, or at the time of writing this blog entry, Telegu Films, prominently displayed on the site. Bollywood and other content created in India and the rest of the subcontinent is driving the cyberspace. With a huge diaspora spread across every part of the world and increasing Internet penetration alongside rising broadband speeds in urban India, the demand for Desi content on torrent networks is on the rise. Websites such as desitorrents.com and dctorrent.com are two torrent search engines that are popular amongst Internet users and cater exclusively to Desi content. A closer look at the content on these sites reveal that the most popular content on these torrent networks are television shows, cricket matches, Bollywood movies, music and regional cinema. Torrent scenes such as AXXO are not unique to Hollywood upload alone. Desi content has its own torrent scenes, responsible for uploading torrent trackers, as soon as the content is out in the public. Users identifying themselves as Jay, Captain Jack or Gangadhin are busy uploading these files on the Desi networks.

Downloaders Demographic

Online since January 2004 and an Internet traffic rank of 7,302, an average visitor spends 8.3 minutes on the Desi Torrents site everyday. Relative to the general Internet population, the website has the highest number of male visitors in the age group of 18 to 34.

Most browsers are at least Graduate School educated who prefer to access the website from home. In comparison, Desi Club Torrents, which is a free website has a younger representative web demographic with males between 18 to 24 years of age being the most prominent visitors. According to the data, it is also revealed that the website has a higher ratio of visitors who have not attended Graduate School but still have attended some college for education

Impact on the Traditional Markets

In most cases, the popularity of Bollywood films in cinema halls and on torrent sites seems to be linked. For example, the most successful Bollywood film of 2008, Ghajini, which ended up raking Rs. 200 crores on the box office, is also one of the most downloaded films on Bit Torrent Networks. However, for the Pirate selling DVD's of latest films, this is not great news. A majority of their customers have migrated to downloading films on the Internet using Peer to Peer technologies. The upper middle-class niche film watching audiences, have been the fastest to acquire computers and get on the Internet. Increasing broadband speeds have ensured that this segment of consumer transitions away from the traditional 'on the corner' pirate shop.

Grey Markets

At the grey markets of Bangalore, aka SJ Road and National Market, smuggled Sony Playstation 3 and XBOX 360's sit pretty on the shelves of vendors, willing to bargain up to 2/3rd the price offered at the showroom, to the interested customer. Alongside, you would find a huge range of pirated discs of games to play on your console. According to Vishwa (name changed), a grey market dealer, these smuggled consoles make their way to the markets via South East Asia. “ The games are often procured locally using Internet to download files and burn them en mass on cheap DVD's, or sourced from the biggest pirate market in this part of the world, Chennai. Youngsters come and purchase them because they are hooked and we give it to them for cheap,” says the burly dealer who makes a living on the increasing appetite for games among the city youngsters. While customers use pirated discs to load the game, piracy also helps the game become rampantly popular. They often need to go online and pay to play these games beyond a certain difficulty level. The more the game is pirated on disc, more the players paying for it online. Online Gaming portals, such as Zappak offer scratch cards and coupons starting from Rs. 100. These can be used for gaming online from home or used at Cyber Cafe's, a popular haunt for gamers.

Size of the Gaming Market

It is not only the grey market, but the sale of gaming consoles by Sony, Microsoft 360 and Nintendo Wii, have all been on the rise in the past 2-3 years. In the month of August 2009, the price of a Playstation 3 was pegged under $300 in US and UK. Consequently it was made available for under Rs.20,000 in the Indian market. There are 4.5 Lakh PS2 users, 1.35 Lakh PSP users and over 50,000 PS3 users in country. Sony now holds 85% share in the console market in India. According to Jacob Cherian, Editor of Skoar, India's only gaming magazine, the only way for this youth driven market is to go up. “While there is no estimate to assess how big the gaming industry in India is, with falling prices of consoles and games, there is a definite scope of growth and consolidation in the Industry. If the distributors of games can counter piracy and maintain their profits, the gaming culture will explode.” Plagued by losses due to grey markets and piracy, the distributors are using competitive pricing to increase volumes. The release of Grand Auto Theft 4 in 2008 has been a striking example. The hugely anticipated game was released in India for Rs. 500 and went on to sell 100,000 copies. This is believed to be the most sold disc in the gaming industry in India. Increasing popularity of online real time gaming is also increasing the scope of expansion of the formal market.

Stepping Stone to Digital Ecosystem

Microsoft's Bill Gates sees the Xbox console at the center of the future digital ecosystem, rather than at its periphery. The gaming console is a general purpose computer and not just a gaming device. For the manufactures at Microsoft and Sony, it is about strategically being in the living room. The ability of the consoles is to make wireless connections with the PC, serve as an Internet browsing machine and also, as a Blu Ray or High Definition disc player, all in the comfort of your living room. But before this is realized there are bigger challenges ahead for the gaming market. Piracy and Intellectual Property issues are looming large for manufactures and distributors, Manufactures are already working to create games for the Indian consumers that adhere to the local culture and cater to the unfamiliar local gaming habits. The innovative publishers with the right approach towards Indian youth will end up yielding great results.

LINKS

While you read this article, it is likely that I am sitting at my home/workspace, relishing a Kirostami film, cooking, cleaning, reading, or maybe out in the market. All but surfing the cloud. Until last year, Weather and Broadband Internet were the two best things about living in Bangalore. Especially the later. A stable fast always on Internet connection is what many of my friends in Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai wish for on Christmas. When I first applied for a 384 Kbps Connection with Airtel in my Aga Abdullah Street house in Richmond Town, Airtel became my Santa and obliged. The engineers came the same day and changed my life. The world of Cinema came begging to my feet with Bit Torrent technology. Streaming became an everyday affair on Internet that was the best I had ever had. In my bliss of downloading bytes upon bytes, I forgot the lesson that experienced souls like Lord Krishna in Gita and Gautam Buddha tell: Nothing in the world is Permanent.

It was at the end of March that I called up Airtel and requested for my connection to be transferred to 8^th Main Road on Vasant Nagar. Assured with a time frame of 10 days, I waited patiently. After two weeks of waiting, I was inclined to call and see when I would get my internet bliss back. The process was delayed and at the end of the week, I was informed that due to a fault in their line, they could not provide me with a new connection. Furious, I called up TATA and asked their people to fit their 512 Kbps Wimax technology in my house. The installation charges were to be waived off if I payed for 4 months in advance. I agreed and the Internet was back. It did not take me long to realize that the new TATA Wimax connection was anywhere close to my old Airtel Broadband. Every couple of hours I would be disconnected from the network when I would have to call the customer care and reset my account. Alas, I had paid for 4 months in advance and this would have to be a long wait. Soon enough, I found myself proficient enough to log into the Tata Indicom server and solve the problem myself. In the meanwhile, an engineer from Airtel called me to check if I still needed to old connection and I asked him to wait for a couple of months. To cut down my ordeal, I decided to upgrade my connection for a Night booster plan, which would mean a full 1 Mbps speed at night. A little too much to expect as things barely boosted on any of the nights that followed. At the end of the third month, I requested them to disconnect the connection, and pledged never to go back to them again.

As I once more, cheerfully walked inside the Airtel office at Cunningham Road, my dream Internet connection flashed in front of my eyes. I played out the procedure of the next couple of hours in front of my eyes, expecting the engineers to be home, creating a mess while drilling wires. And when it is all done, I would go back and spend the night catching up with all the episodes of my favorite shows that I had missed over the past 3 months. The executive informed me that this would take a little longer than expected, 3 days on the max! I looked up for more patience within myself and went back home. The paper work was completed the next day and the payment of Rs. 2000 was made. A week later, I was still waiting for the engineers to come. Expectantly, I would call the local executive who would promise to be at my service in a couple of hours and not turn up. The game went for a couple of days before he finally turned up. In the next 20 minutes of him jumping on the terrace, exploring the outside of the house, he came to break the news to me. “Sorry Sir, we cannot put a connection here. There is a fault in the line coming this side and it will take at least a month to fix it.” I was almost in tears. His words broke my heart and all he could do to console me was promise a refund in 3 days. The cheque came a couple of weeks later. And I still call him to check every three days, if the fault has been repaired and I can get my dream Internet back!

'Dark Fibre' is a documentary/fiction hybrid by J. J. King, producer/director of the 'Steal This Film' series, which has already reached over six million people online and is working towards achieving international television distribution, and Peter Mann, a British film-maker whose most recent work is titled 'Sargy Mann'.

'Dark Fibre' is set amongst the cablewallahs of Bangalore, and uses the device of cabling to traverse different aspects of informational life in the city. It follows the lives of real cablewallahs and examines the political status of their activities.The fictional elements arrive in the form of a young apprentice cablewallah who attempts to unite the disparate home-brew networks in the city into a grassroots, horizontal 'people's network'. Some support the activity and some vehemently oppose it -- but what no one expects is the emergence of a seditious, unlicensed and anonymous new channel which begins to transform people's imaginations in the city. Our young cable apprentice is tasked with tracking down the channel, as powerful political forces array themselves against it. Not only the 'security' of the city, but his own wellbeing depend on whether he finds it, and whether it proves possible to stop its distribution. Meanwhile, mysterious elements from outside India -- possibly emissaries of a still-greater power -- are appearing on the scene. This quest for the unknown channel is reminiscent of a modern-day 'Moby Dick', with the city of Bangalore as the high seas and our cable apprentice a reluctant Ahab. The action is a combination of verite, improvisation and scripted action.

In conversation with Jamie and Peter in Bangalore

Q: How did you get the idea to make Dark Fibre, a fiction film?

Peter:

We first met through BritDoc--British Documentary--and they run Channel 4 which is a Film Foundation. They have been good to us. They funded both Steal This Film and 'Sargy Mann'--a film on my father who is a blind man. They organised a meeting of all the directors they had funded and we met there. We were both thinking about what to do next and felt frustrated because we were making documentaries but really wanted to make fiction. We both shared the same ideas, with regard to shooting something completely as it is but presenting it in a fictional context.

Jamie:

And furthermore, we agreed that documentaries are not really real life. Because at the end of the day, I will keep only what I like, make you look at the way I want you to, I would cut you out of the picture if I don't agree with you. This happens even with the most worthy of the films. And you can be more truthful in fiction because its always a subjective truth. Fiction allows things to remain more real. I don't need an argument in the film. If I can just say, here is one guy's story and this is his story, then you can see the city with no bullshit. The story would allow you to look at things as they are; it's partly that idea behind Dark Fibre.

This is in some way related to the concept of the artistic truth. You use all the tools at your disposal to tell a story, not just literal facts. This is about presenting things within an atmosphere, presenting things in a context. This then adds up to someone understanding something about the world, and I think fiction serves that better than documentary.

Q: What brings you to India to make Dark Fibre? 

I think the cablewallah networks are unique. I have never seen anything like this anywhere else myself. India is also in a very, very interesting time and place. The idea of information as a commodity is alive here as it isn't in many other places. The value of information is very high here. There is a western imaginary of Bangalore which is immediately fascinating. It's the place where our information is processed. This is where our credit card and our phone data goes. And it enters a weird black market that we don't understand. This is the cliché. We already have cliché films about Bombay and call centers. We do not want to put a call center into the film because that is already the imagined cliché vision of Bangalore. It is obviously far more sophisticated than that. And in some ways it is far patchier than that. Who are these information workers? What are they doing and at which level are they doing it? Are they the street workers putting cables into walls or is it the guy at Infosys who is hiring people and teaching them to fake English accents? Which is the real information worker? That variegation of information life in Bangalore is interesting, not just to us, but, I think, to everybody. Information dexterity is perceived as the signature of Northern dominance. The ability to manipulate information, to move intellectual property, to transform an idea into a product, to transform someone else's idea into your property. That kind of dexterity is seen as the keynote of western dominance. And watching a developing country transform into an information dextrous economy, seeing information dextrous people is amazing. And then there is the patchiness of it--who gets left behind? Who gets included? Whats missed out and what is added in that vision? How is it manipulated in favor of big businesses? And all of this is fascinating not only from an orientalist's point of view but from a general economic-socio-political point of view.

Q: What is the underlying concept that brought about Dark Fibre?

Jamie:
 
While making 'Steal This Film' we spent a year on a 36 minute film trying to make an argument that would be staunch, impactful, and radical. What we learned is that it's very difficult to set out to argue your way to the truth. It's relatively easier to let the world itself speak and in the meanwhile observe it in detail. The kind of issues we are engaging with in Dark Fibre are around people's relationships with information and their relationship with freedom. These are very, very hard to nail down and speak about in a radical way. These are things left to the Intellectual Property lawyers, it's already happening, it's already cliché. All the arguments are already written. And even after a year of Steal This Film, it's shown in liberal universities – Wait! Liberal universities? I was supposed to be an anarchist! We want to go further. We want to tell people things through an image.

Peter:

Our idea of relationships is exploring the parallel physical communications networks and the virtual networks. In a city like Bangalore you see it. The traffic here is chaotic but it works. How? There is no answer to that. But it provokes questions. Through Dark Fibre, we are trying to say that there is a potential network in the city (cablewallahs) which is currently being unused and asking what it would take to unlock that potential and where would it take us if that really happens.

Q: Why the cablewallahs? What is so fascinating about them?
 
Jamie:
 
Yes, we are interested in the cablewallah network and I think it's quite perverse that it makes people from around here laugh. You see cablewallahs as a fact of life, probably a mundane fact of life. Westerners, Europeans, who are used to orderly deployments of information technology are completely blown away when you tell them that this is how it works in India. Ad hoc, grassroots, messy, out of control.

To the West, it is just unthinkable that the government would allow something like these networks, which supply 24 hours television. To not have these under government control is unthinkable.

So, obviously, we are at a point of transition where it's unthinkable to the Global North and it would become unthinkable here too. We are in the middle of that shift and thats one of the things we are trying to document; the network form, which is horizontal, ad hoc and on the street, becomes not only regulated but seditious.

Because it begins to be seen as almost dangerous. As the regulators move in, they take Direct to Home control of all the deployments of their intellectual properties. The older networks start to look not only like intellectual property right infringements, but their disorder is also seen to be terrorist.

Our proposal in this film is - "What if instead of just dying peacefully, someone had the idea of transforming these networks that used to deliver international and local content, by connecting them together, and turning them in to massive local media networks which are used for media sharing, file sharing, your own local channel?" There is a potential because the network is already there.

In a way, if you think about the microcosm idea of the Internet as a whole, that essentially is what our plot is. On a certain level you would say that it's just a network but then the internet is the most important driving force of the world today.

Jamie:

The point is that once this idea is out, we can create the infrastructure to connect the entire city, infrastructure we can all use. Everyone starts to have a stake in it, be it the newspapers, TV channels, pirate markets (they will say, "No one is buying our shit anymore because they can share it over the network"), the computer manufacturers, the importer of Chinese routers, a gangster who thinks he can advertise on the network, the intellectual property lawyer... different people start getting the idea that they might have something to do with this network. Basically this is a chaos scenario, from which arises the plot. It is a fictional scenario but is set in the reality of information sharing here today.

Q: What is the technique you use to make the plot hybrid fictional?
 
Jamie:

The main character is played by an actor and he will be an embedded actor, working with the real cablewallah. Parts of it will be documentary, seeing how the cablewallah works and the viewer, through watching this actor, will understand how the network works. We have already spoken to some cablewallahs. And they have been very happy about all this. We see this as sort of embedded journalism, where the embedded actor takes the place of an interviewer. The film is not going to be historical. The characters will have a background and the film is going to have a background, but what we are trying to do is show the 'now'. We want to make it speak about the past and speak about the future. About our future.

Q: 'Steal This Film' was a critique of the international intellectual property regimes. Would this film also be similarly advocative?
 
Jamie:

We are going to the next level from 'Steal This Film', and this is more of my argument than Peter's -- that the conversation about Intellectual Propery is over or the film is the last word at all. But I personally need to go somewhere else to say more. I am interested in information in general. And how information affects what we can think, what we can dream, what we can be, how it forms all of us -- that is what we are working on in 'Dark Fibre' and the question of intellectual property is a subset of that question. We spend a lot of time talking about ideas and that's one of the things that connects us. We want to articulate a lot of the philosophical, abstract ideas in this film. And we will see if we can manage to do it in a new context. 'Steal This Film' interested a few people and this will be the next point of departure for discussion.

Q: Peter, do you share Jamie's passion for Intellectual Property?
 
Peter:

Not in the same way. I am very interested in the subject. Anybody who creates work is interested in it. In my last film, there is a constant commentary of a test match going on and as a result of it, it is almost impossible to sell it to television; people who own the rights to the cricket say that we have to pay them thousands of pounds! I am interested in documenting the world as it is and not what is cleaned up for TV. I am interested in the specifics. If you get on a bus in London, the ringtone everyone has on a mobile phone is not a ringtone but a particular song. But you can't put that on film because Mick Jagger, or whoever the artiste is, will want ten thousand pounds for it. The frustration that I face is that it is impossible to put the world that I see in front of me on film. I used to work with TV commercials and you would never see anything in commercials that is not the product being sold. I was once working on a Coca Cola commercial in New York and there was a person who was appointed by Coca Cola to go around the whole set to ensure that no one is drinking anything that is not made by Coca Cola, whether that is water or juice. Anything. And I think all that is about creating a creased world that we don't live in. I am interested in the world, through documentaries or fiction, that we live in. And it is bits of music, it is referenced films, we reference music, we reference sport. Just because people have rights over these, you never see them on film. That is my main area of interest, more than what is happening on the legal front.