The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
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Enforcement of Anti-piracy Laws by the Indian Entertainment Industry
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/piracy-and-enforcement
<b>This brief note by Siddharth Chadha seeks to map out the key actors in enforcement of copyright laws. These bodies not only investigate cases of infringement and piracy relating to the entertainment industry, but tie up with the police and IP law firms to pursue actions against the offenders through raids (many of them illegal) and court cases. Siddharth notes that 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, mostly multinational, media corporations.</b>
<h3>International Intellectual Property Alliance<br /></h3>
<p>The <a class="external-link" href="http://www.iipa.com/">International Intellectual Property Alliance</a> (IIPA) is an international lobby group of US media industries with close ties to the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ustr.gov/">United States Trade Representative</a>. 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. </p>
<h3>Motion Pictures Association</h3>
<p>The <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mpaa.org/AboutUs.asp">Motion Picture Association of America</a> (MPAA) through its international counterpart, Motion Pictures Association (MPA), has been unofficially operational in India for the last 15 years. Its member companies are <a class="external-link" href="http://corporate.disney.go.com/">Walt Disney</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.paramount.com/">Paramount</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.sonypictures.in/">Sony Entertainment</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.foxmovies.com/">Twentieth Century Fox</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.patents.com/Universal-City-Studios-LLLP/Universal-City/CA/90328/company/">Universal Studios</a>, and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.warnerbros.com/">Warner Bros.</a> 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.</p>
<p>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 <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mpda.in/hollywoodinvestment.html">Motion Picture Distributor's Association India (Pvt.) Limited</a> (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. </p>
<p>According to the organization's own assertion, in 2006 the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.filmpiracy.com/">MPA's Asia-Pacific operation</a> 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.</p>
<h3>Indian Music Industry</h3>
<p>The world's second-oldest music companies' association, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.indianmi.org/index.htm">Indian Music Industry</a> (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 <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ifpi.org/">International Federation of Phonographic Industry</a> (IFPI) and is registered as a society in West Bengal. IMI members includes major record companies like <a class="external-link" href="http://www.saregama.com/">Saregama</a>, HMV, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.umusicindia.com/">Universal Music (India)</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tips.in/landing/">Tips</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.venusgroup.org/newaudio/about_us.html">Venus</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.sonybmg.co.in/">Sony BMG (India)</a>, Crescendo, Virgin Records, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.music-from-india.com/">Magnasound</a>, Milestone, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.timesmusic.com/">Times Music</a> and several other prominent national and regional labels that represent over 75 per cent of the output in corporate recordings.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Business Software Alliance</h3>
<p>Headquartered in Washington DC, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bsa.org/country.aspx?sc_lang=hi-IN">the Business Software Alliance has a regional office in Delhi</a>, and has been instrumental in conducting anti-piracy operations across the country. According to the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bsa.org/country.aspx?sc_lang=hi-IN">BSA</a>, 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 $3,823 million while Pakistan ranks nine with 83 per cent piracy rate. They have engaged the general public in providing them with information on pirated software through an anti-piracy initiative – The Rewards Programme. Launched in 2005, reward amount up to Rs.50, 000, would be provided for information leading to successful legal action against companies using unlicensed software. The reward program was aimed to encourage people to <a class="external-link" href="http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/BSA_Nasscom_launch_initiative_to_curb_software_piracy-nid-27871.html">support the fight against piracy and to report software piracy to the NASSCOM-BSA Anti-Piracy Software Hotline</a>.</p>
<p>In 2006, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bsa.org/country.aspx?sc_lang=hi-IN">BSA</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nasscom.org/">NASSCOM</a> got a shot in their arms by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC39/fc39.html">winning the largest settlement amount for a copyright case in India</a>, with <a class="external-link" href="http://www.netlinxindia.com/">Netlinx India Pvt. Ltd</a>. The case had emerged after a civil raid was conducted at the premises of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.netlinxindia.com/">Netlinx</a> in December 2000, leading to inspection and impounding of 40 PCs, carrying illegal unlicensed software. The settlement includes damages of US$ 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.</p>
<h3>Industry Enforcers</h3>
<p>Bollywood Film and Music companies, such as <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tseries.com/">T-Series</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.yashrajfilms.com/">Yashraj Films</a>, have established anti-piracy arms to combat piracy in specific markets. <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tseries.com/">T-Series</a> 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, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tseries.com/">T-Series</a> launched an<a class="external-link" href="http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/entertainment/t-series-to-nab-digital-content-pirates-on-own_100200953.html"> anti-piracy campaign</a> 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 <em>Billu</em>, <em>Ghajini</em>, <em>Aap Ka Suroor</em>, <em>Apne</em>, <em>Fashion</em> and <em>Karz</em> that had been illegally downloaded and copied onto multiple discs, card readers and pen-drives.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.yashrajfilms.com/">Yashraj Films</a>, 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 <a class="external-link" href="http://www.utvnet.com/">UTV</a>, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.erosplc.com/">Eros International</a>. 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. <a class="external-link" href="http://www.yashrajfilms.com/">Yashraj Films</a> 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 <a class="external-link" href="http://www.yashrajfilms.com/">Yashraj Films</a> lists news reports from across US and Europe of instances of crackdown on pirates. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/piracy-and-enforcement'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/piracy-and-enforcement</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaPiracyIntellectual Property RightsAccess to Knowledge2011-08-04T04:35:48ZBlog EntryAt the end of the niche optical pirate
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/at-the-end-of-the-niche-optical-pirate
<b>In this blog post, Siddharth Chaddha goes enquiring into the modus operandi of a video pirate / film lover / businessman in Bangalore's famed National Market.</b>
<h3><strong>Getting to the National Market</strong></h3>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Meet the Pirate</h3>
<p>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."</p>
<h3>The Business of Piracy<strong><br /></strong></h3>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Enforcement Threat<strong><br /></strong></h3>
<p>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."</p>
I ask him for Tamil titles. He asked if
I wanted <em>Ghajani</em>. “I saw it when it released. Give me something
that's worth watching.” He picks out two. <em>Saroja</em> and <em>Subramaniya
Puram</em>. He doesn't make a profit in this deal but something tells me
that he is happy to spread the love of good films. "Can I click
a picture?" He refuses, saying it would not be a good idea. I
shake his hand. Until next time.
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/at-the-end-of-the-niche-optical-pirate'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/at-the-end-of-the-niche-optical-pirate</a>
</p>
No publishersiddharthIT ActConsumer RightsPiracyIntellectual Property Rightsinternet and society2011-08-04T04:44:58ZBlog EntryEmerging Bit Torrent Trends in India
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/emerging-bit-torrrent-trends-in-india
<b>Internet has been a revelation ever since its introduction. The writer in this blog examines how the progress made by Internet based technologies could never be reversed.</b>
<h2>From Kazaa to The Pirate Bay</h2>
<p>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. BitTorrent soon became the most common protocol to transfer content over the Internet. BitTorrent metafiles themselves do not store copyrighted data. Hence, BitTorrent 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.<strong><br /></strong></p>
<h2><strong>Desi content on Torrent Networks</strong></h2>
<p><strong>Desi : A term derived from Sanskrit, meaning region, province or country. It now refers to the people and culture of South Asian Diaspora.</strong></p>
<p><strong>On the most popular BitTorrent search engines, <a href="http://torrentz.com/" target="_blank">torrentz.com</a>, 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 <a href="http://desitorrents.com/" target="_blank">desitorrents.com</a> and <a href="http://dctorrent.com/" target="_blank">dctorrent.com</a> 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 uploads 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 Gunga Din are busy uploading these files on the desi networks.
</strong></p>
<p><strong>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.<br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Most users are college graduates 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</strong></p>
<h2><strong>Impact on the Traditional Markets</strong></h2>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>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. </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/emerging-bit-torrrent-trends-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/emerging-bit-torrrent-trends-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersiddharthCyberspaceinternet and societyPiracyIntellectual Property Rightscyberculturescyberspaces2011-08-04T04:44:48ZBlog EntryConsumers International IP Watch List 2009
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/consumers-international-ip-watch-list-2009
<b>In response to the US Special 301 report, Consumers International brought out an IP Watch List. CIS contributed the India Country Report for the Watch List.</b>
<p>Every year the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes a report known as the Special 301 Report, documenting IP regimes in various countries, and publishing a list of those countries which do not afford 'adequate and effective' protection for US intellectual property. This year <a class="external-link" href="http://www.consumersinternational.org">Consumers International</a>, which set up the <a class="external-link" href="http://a2knetwork.org">A2K Network</a>, published a counter-report, the <a class="external-link" href="http://a2knetwork.org/watchlist">IP Watch List 2009</a> for which the <a class="external-link" href="http://a2knetwork.org/reports2009/india">India report</a> [pdf <a href="https://cis-india.org/../publications/cis-publications/pranesh/IP%20Watch%20List%20-%20India%20Report.pdf" class="internal-link" title="CI IP Watch List 2009 - India Report">here</a>] was prepared by the Centre for Internet and Society. While the Special 301 Report labels India a "Priority Watch List" country (meaning that it has an IP regime least conducive to the trade interests of the United States), the Consumers International report holds India to have the most consumer-friendly and balanced IP regulation amongst the sixteen countries surveyed. The CI report lambasts the USTR's attempts to make countries comply with unreasonable demands which go over and above the countries' international obligations. For instance, the WIPO Internet Treaties, which have been criticised by many, is sought to be imposed on countries like Israel, India, and Canada. <a class="external-link" href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/62/128/">Prof. Michael Geist</a> of the University of Ottawa even notes that piracy levels and accession to the WCT and WPPT do not seem to be correlated: "In fact, only five countries that have ratified the WIPO Internet treaties have software piracy rates lower than Canada." Still, the USTR has placed both India, whose IP laws are being praised by Consumers International and Canada, which has low piracy rates even by the accounts of the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3993427">notoriously propagandist BSA</a>, have both been placed in the Priority Watch List. The reasons for doing so are not all that unclear if we look at who really shapes the USTR's Special 301 report.</p>
<p>The India section of the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/Full%20Version%20of%20the%202009%20SPECIAL%20301%20REPORT.pdf">USTR Special 301 report [pdf]</a> (pp. 18-19) notes:<br /> "India will remain on the Priority Watch List in 2009. India has made progress on improving its IPR infrastructure, including through the modernization of its IP offices and the introduction of an e-filing system for trademark and patent applications. Further, the IP offices have started the process of digitization of intellectual property files. In addition, the Indian ministerial committee on IPR enforcement has supported the creation of specialized IPR police units. Customs enforcement has also improved through the implementation of the 2007 IPR (Imported Goods) Enforcement Rules as well as by seizures of unlicensed copyrighted goods intended for export. However, the United States remains concerned about weak IPR protection and enforcement in India. The United States continues to urge India to improve its IPR regime by providing stronger protection for copyrights and patents, as well as effective protection against unfair commercial use of undisclosed test and other data generated to obtain marketing approval for pharmaceutical and agrochemical products. The United States encourages India to enact legislation in the near term to strengthen its copyright laws and implement the provisions of the WIPO Internet Treaties. The United States also encourages India to improve its IPR enforcement system by enacting effective optical disc legislation to combat optical disc piracy. Piracy and counterfeiting, including of pharmaceuticals, remain a serious problem in India. India’s criminal IPR enforcement regime remains weak. Police action against those engaged in manufacturing, distributing, or selling pirated and counterfeit goods, and expeditious judicial dispositions for IPR infringement and imposition of deterrent-level sentences, is needed. As counterfeit medicines are a serious problem in India, the United States is encouraged by the recent passage of the Drugs and Cosmetics (Amendment) Act 2008 that will increase penalties for spurious and adulterated pharmaceuticals. The United States urges India to strengthen its IPR regime and stands ready to work with India on these issues during the coming year."</p>
<p>Large chunks of it seem to have been 'borrowed' from the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.iipa.com/rbc/2009/2009SPEC301INDIA.pdf">IIPA submissions</a>. The IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance), which is made up of US-based IP-maximalist lobbyists like the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, National Music Publishers Association, Association of American Publishers, and Business Software Alliance, is a body that was created to lobby the USTR to impose trade sanctions on those countries which did not follow the path that IIPA thought best for those countries.<br />Interestingly, the IIPA submissions talk not of IIPA's concern about weak IPR protection and enforcement in India, but instead states: "the United States remains concerned about weak IPR protection and enforcement in India". This exact line even manages to finds itself in the USTR Special 301 report. Many IIPA complaints find themselves as USTR recommendations, including: a) fast-track judical dispositions of IP cases; b) special laws against optical disc piracy; c) ratification of the WCT and WPPT (the "WIPO Internet Treaties"); d) increased criminal enforcement of intellectual property.</p>
<p>Thus, the Special 301 report emerges as a <a class="external-link" href="http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86148/is-putting-canada-on-a-priority-watchlist-going-to-backfire/">discredited report</a> that the US's trade partners should not (and by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3911/125/">many accounts</a> <a class="external-link" href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2870/125/">do not</a>) pay attention to. Measurement of IP balance and consumer-friendliness such as the Consumers International IP Watch List are more important, and should eventually lead to a <a class="external-link" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1021065">measurement index for Access to Knowledge</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/consumers-international-ip-watch-list-2009'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/consumers-international-ip-watch-list-2009</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshPiracyConsumer RightsIntellectual Property RightsFair Dealings2011-08-04T04:42:27ZBlog EntryThe Dark Fibre Files: 'Steal This Film' and the Pirate Bay Trial
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-dark-fibre-files-steal-this-film-and-the-pirate-bay-trial
<b>In this posting, the fifth blog entry on the making of the film 'Dark Fibre' by Jamie King and Peter Mann, Siddharth Chadha discusses the Swedish trial of the Pirate Bay, which brought up some of the debates on intellectual property rights and piracy that were highlighted in 'Steal This Film'. </b>
<p>In August 2006, Jamie King shot Part I of 'Steal This Film' in Sweden, combining found material, propoganda-like slogans and Vox Pops, along with accounts from members of the Pirate Bay, Piratbryan and the Pirate Party. The film critiques the alleged regulatory capture attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby in order to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO. The film interviews the Pirate Bay Members Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Peter Sunde and Piratbryan members Rasmus Fleischer, Johan and Sara Anderson, who recount the search and seizure raid conducted by the Swedish police, with the purpose of disrupting the Pirate Bay's BitTorrent tracker. This raid, according to the Pirate Bay members, was against the Swedish law and conducted under pressure from the Motion Pictures Association of America. The documentary was officially released on filesharing networks on 28 December 2007 and, according to the filmmakers, downloaded 150,000 times in the first three days of distribution. The Pirate Bay encouraged the downloading of 'Steal This Film II', announcing the film's release on its blog. 'Steal This Film II' was also screened by the Pirate Cinema, Copenhagen, in January 2008.</p>
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<p>In the post-Napster era of peer to peer networks, the Pirate Bay case has been the media highlight on file sharing. After the police raided 12 different premises in May 2006, confiscating 186 servers and causing the torrent tracker to shut down for three days, the Pirate Bay re-opened to double the number of visitors, as its popularity got a shot in the arm with the extensive media coverage. While the MPAA termed the raids as extremely succesful, the Pirate Bay, which restored its servers in three days, thought otherwise. After a preliminary investigation and interrogation by the police, a four thousand page report was prepared by the prosecutor, in preperation of a trial. The Swedish prosecutors filled charges in January 2008 against four individuals they associated with The Pirate Bay for 'promoting other people's infringement of copyright laws'. <br /><br />The Swedish prosecution raised a furore in the world of Intellectual Property by suing The Pirate Bay. While the prosecutors contended that millions of people get access to copyrighted materials such as movies, songs, and software programs, which can be downloaded for free by going to The Pirate Bay site, the contentious issue lies in the fact that the Pirate Bay itself does not host any files. Just as Google is an index of links, The Pirate Bay is an index of where those files are located. The original files are located across millions of computers around the world, which may only have a small fragment of the original file, and which share these fragments using BitTorrent. According to CableLabs, an organisation of the North American cable industry, BitTorrent represents 18% of all Broadband traffic. Apart from suing The Pirate Bay, the major Hollywood studios have also tried pressure tactics to contain copyright infringement. HBO in 2005, for example, poisoned torrents of its 'Rome' TV show by providing bad chunks of data to clients. It also sent cease and desist letters to the Internet Service Providers of BitTorrent users. The increased pressure from the Hollywood lobby and persistent lawsuits have resulted in the shutdown of various BitTorrent indexing sites, such as the Supernova.org, Torrentspy, LokiTorrent, Demonoid, Oink.cd and EliteTorrents.org. <br /><br />The Pirate Bay Trial started on 16th Feburary 2009, with defense lawer Per E. Samuelson, arguing that it is legal to offer a service that can be used both legally and illegally, under the Swedish Law. He compared the Pirate Bay services to making cars that can be driven faster than the speed limit. On the second day of the trial, the prosecution dropped half of the charges against the Pirate Bay, due to shortcomings in evidence. Prosecutor Hakan Roswall dropped all charges related to 'assisting copyright infringement', leaving 'assisting making available' as the remaining charge. The next day of the trial saw an argument by the defense attorney Per Samuelson, which was latter dubbed as the King Kong defense, popularised by the blogs, file sharing news feeds and the media. The defense stated:<br /><br /><em>EU directive 2000/31/EC says that he who provides an information service is not responsible for the information that is being transferred. In order to be responsible, the service provider must initiate the transfer. But the admins of the Pirate Bay don’t initiate transfers. It’s the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong... According to legal procedure, the accusations must be against an individual and there must be a close tie between the perpetrators of a crime and those who are assisting. This tie has not been shown. The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström personally has interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia...</em><br /><br />The remaining six days of the trial saw questioning of the accused, witness depositions by plaintiffs and conflicting academic research by experts, as the prosecution tried to show that the Pirate Bay was an immensely profitable business that made money by helping others infringe copyright laws. The four operators of the site, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom, were convicted by Stockholm district court on 17 April 2009 and sentenced to one year in jail each and a total of 30 million SEK (approximately 3.5 million USD, 2.7 million EUR) in fines and damages. In its verdict the court stated that 'responsibility for assistance can strike someone who has only insignificantly assisted in the principal crime'. <br /><br />Even while filming of 'Dark Fibre' was on here in Bangalore, Jamie and his crew were filming outside the courtroom in Stockholm, as the the subjects of 'Steal This Film' went on trial and were convicted. The convicted are now preparing to appeal against the sentence and the fine in the higher Swedish court. </p>
<p><img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/copy_of_piratebay.gif/image_preview" alt="piratebay" height="400" width="363" /> <img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/copy_of_prtbay.jpg/image_preview" alt="prtbay" height="315" width="284" /></p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-dark-fibre-files-steal-this-film-and-the-pirate-bay-trial'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-dark-fibre-files-steal-this-film-and-the-pirate-bay-trial</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaPiracyIntellectual Property RightsCable TV2011-08-04T04:41:57ZBlog EntryThe 'Dark Fibre' Files: Cable TV Technology for Dummies
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-dark-fibre-files-cable-tv-technology-for-dummies
<b>In the fourth entry documenting the making of 'Dark Fibre', a film by Jamie King and Peter Mann, Siddharth Chadha simplifies cable TV technology for the uninitiated. </b>
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<p>Confused about the difference between an MSO and a COAX? Well, this will simplify cable TV for you.</p>
<p>The system of providing television to consumers using radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions using fixed optical fibers or co-axial cables is called cable television. This is different from the over-the-air method used in traditional television broadcasting (via radio waves) for which a television antenna is required. FM radio programming, high-speed internet, telephony, and similar non-television services may also be provided.</p>
<p>Still confused? It's simple.</p>
<p>Your local cablewallah is a Private Cable Operator, a private small cable company dealing/competing with the Multi System Operators (MSO), who is an operator of multiple cable systems. For example, Hathway, Siti Cable, In TV are MSOs who operate either directly or via small cablewallahs. When cable TV was first introduced in India, small entrepreneurs set up their private cable companies, providing anywhere between seven to twenty channels to their local neighborhoods. They put up their own cable dish to down-link the broadcast signals from the satellite. Up until 1997, this was the only way one could access cable television; but this changed with the entry of the Multi Service Operators, who used better technology to provide clearer pictures, better sound and up to a 100 channels.</p>
<p>The broadcaster up-links the signal to their channel via satellite. The MSO down-links this signal, using a control room or a rear end. Inside the control room would be a set of RF signal modulators. Scientific Atalanta is an industry standard in India that provides control room equipment to various MSOs. The MSOs, which started off with analog technology to transmit their signals, are now moving to digital cable, delivering cable television as digital data instead of an analog frequency.</p>
<p>Because many MSOs continue to use analog transmission for low-numbered channels, and digital transmission for higher channels, a typical digital cable box is also able to convert traditional analog cable signals. Despite the advance of cable-ready television sets, most users need a cable box to receive digital channels. However, customers who do not subscribe to any digital channels can go without; MSOs provide "basic cable" service within the analog range, avoiding the need for distributing a box. However, advanced carrier services such as pay per view and video on demand will require a box.</p>
<p>Digital television allows for a higher quality and quantity of cable TV signals. Digital transmission is compressed and allows a much greater capacity than analog signals it almost completely eliminates interference. Digital converters have the same purpose as analog ones but are able to receive digital cable signals. With more data than analog in the same bandwidth, the system delivers superior picture and sound quality.</p>
<p>The MSO further re-transmits the RF signal from to the cablewallah, via coaxial optical cables or simply known as COAX that in turn boosts this signal using amplifiers and provide it to various homes using a common type of optical cable called RG6. The term RG was initially used by the US Military as an abbreviation for Radio Guide, but the term is now obsolete. RG6, in common practice, refers to coaxial cables with an 18 AWG center conductor and 75 ohm characteristic impedance. It typically has a copper-coated steel center conductor and a combination aluminum foil/aluminum braid shield. They are usually fitted with F connector style, in each end.</p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/submarineumbilicalcable259620.jpg/image_preview" alt="Submariine Umblical Cable" height="386" width="400" /></p>
<p>Once the signal reaches a cablewallah, the responsibility of the MSO ends, and it is up to the Cable Operator to maintain and distribute cable television from there onwards. Once the signal reaches the consumer's home, it is processed by a television converter box, popularly known as a set top box. A set top box is an electronic tunning device that transposes or converts any of the available channels from a cable television service to an analog RF signal on a single channel. The device enables televisions which are not cable ready to receive cable channels.</p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/SetTopBox.jpg/image_preview" alt="Set Top Box" height="125" width="400" /></p>
<p>Modern set top boxes have a descrambling ability. The past three years have seen the entry of Direct to Home Pay TV operators, such as Tata Sky or Dish TV in the market, taking the technology to a new levels of sophistication, where the customers use a small cable dish to down-link the broadcasters signals which are processed with a set top box. In case of premium television, or paid channels, the broadcaster up-links an encrypted or a scrambled signal. When the signal reaches the home of the end user, it is reprocessed using a set top box, thus descrambling it and making it available for viewing on Television. A descrambler must be used with a cable converter box to be able to unencrypt all the premium and pay-per-view channels of a cable television system.</p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/DTHDish.jpg/image_preview" alt="DTH DISH" height="388" width="400" /></p>
<p>Now, put on that television, forget the tech and get back to the latest IPL match!<em><br /></em></p>
<p><em>With inputs from MSOs, Local Cable Operators and Wikipedia for definitions of terms.</em></p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-dark-fibre-files-cable-tv-technology-for-dummies'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-dark-fibre-files-cable-tv-technology-for-dummies</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaPiracyIntellectual Property RightsCable TV2011-08-04T04:41:52ZBlog EntryThe 'Dark Fibre' Files: The Grey Market Deficit
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-dark-fibre-files-the-grey-market-deficit
<b>In this, the third entry in his series discussing the making of 'Dark Fibre' by Jamie King and Peter Mann, Siddharth Chadha gives an overview of piracy in the pay TV industry. </b>
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<p>Television emerged as one of the biggest gainers in a post-liberalisation India during the '90s. From 41 television sets and one channel in 1962, the country has come a long way, with over 130 million homes with televison. Cable TV has spurred an unprecedented revolution for the entertainment and advertising industry. As a country where more than half the population lives on a daily income of less than USD 1 but swears by its Indian Premier League, India has also emerged as the Asian giant in pay TV piracy. The Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia, in a pan-Asia survey, pegged the net loss of revenue to the television industry due to pay TV piracy at USD 1.1 Billion in 2008. In its annual report published last year, it estimates that over 21.64 million cable TV homes went unreported, either on account of theft or leakage by local cable operators. This is almost one-fouth of the 8.5 million existing cable TV connections across the country. The report also suggests that 65 percent of the total loss of USD 1.76 Billion due to cable TV piracy in Asia comes from India alone, followed by Thailand at USD 180 Million.</p>
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<p>According to Shashi Kumar, the General Manager of Hathway Cable TV Private Limited, a Multi Service Operator, 'All cable operators report only 10-15 percent of their total subscriber base. Obviously, the piracy figures in this industry will be very high.' A cable operator in Bangalore, on the condition of being anonymous, discloses, 'We are providing cable TV connections to over 800 homes. But we declare only 250, because that is the minimum number of connections that the MSO wants. There are not enough margins in the business to sustain accurate reporting.' The average cost of setting up a cable operation now runs into crores of rupees and the business is not lucrative if it is entirely clean. The average price for a digital cable connection charged by an MSO to the local cablewallah is between Rs. 180-200, the charge to the end consumer is Rs. 250 per connection per month. This does not seem to spell profit for the cable operators. 'An amplifier alone costs Rs. 3500 per unit and serves about 20 homes. The cost of the RJ6 cable is Rs. 4300 a bundle. How can we be expected to do business on a profit margin of Rs. 50 per month? If the margins were higher, perhaps operators would not leak connections,' adds the cable operator.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>While Multi Service Operators seem to be fed up of the situation, there is not much they can do about it. 'There are already 5-6 national level MSOs. And then there are new entrants into the market every month. Despite knowing that the cable operators are under-reporting connections, we continue to work on minimum level subscriptions because the market is extremely competitive. If we take action against a cable operator, we would lose out on whatever business we have to a new player,' adds Shashi, while describing the operations of their company.</p>
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<p>The industry is now looking at growth in the number of Direct To Home subscribers as a deterrent to piracy. Estimates suggest that by 2015, over 40 percent of subscribers in the pay TV universe is likely to comprise DTH owners, up from the current five percent. Frightened of repeated instances of signal piracy on their networks, broadcasters are now investing in signal encryption technology, to ward of the pirates. However, till DTH television becomes the norm rather than the exception, one can expect more tussles between the broadcasters, Multi Service Operators, regulators and cablewallahs, in the world of pay TV piracy.</p>
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<p align="center"><img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/thefutureishere.jpg/image_preview" alt="the future is here" height="260" width="400" /></p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/TVServantLogo.png/image_preview" alt="tv servant logo" height="400" width="250" /></p>
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<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-dark-fibre-files-the-grey-market-deficit'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-dark-fibre-files-the-grey-market-deficit</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaPiracyIntellectual Property RightsCable TV2011-08-04T04:41:47ZBlog EntryThe 'Dark Fibre' Files: Interview with Jamie King and Peter Mann
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/dark-fibre-files
<b>Film-makers Jamie King (producer/director of the 'Steal This Film' series) and Peter Mann, in conversation with Siddharth Chadha, on 'Dark Fibre', their latest production, being filmed in Bangalore</b>
<p>'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'.</p>
<p>'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.</p>
<h3>In conversation with Jamie and Peter in Bangalore</h3>
<p><strong>Q: How did you get the idea to make Dark Fibre, a fiction film?</strong></p>
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<p><strong>Peter: </strong></p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Jamie:</strong></p>
<strong></strong>
<p>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.</p>
<strong>Peter:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Q: What brings you to India to make Dark Fibre?</strong> </p>
<strong>Jamie:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Q: What is the underlying concept that brought about Dark Fibre?</strong><br /><strong><br />Jamie:</strong><br /> <br />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.</p>
<strong></strong>
<p><strong>Peter:</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Q: Why the cablewallahs? What is so fascinating about them?</strong><br /> <br /><strong>Jamie: </strong><br /> <br />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.</p>
<strong><br />Peter:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>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.</p>
<strong>Jamie:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>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.</p>
<strong>Q: Why would you call it seditious?</strong><strong><br /><br />Jamie: <br /><br /></strong>
<p>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.</p>
<strong>Q: What is the film trying to propose through linking these cablewallah networks?</strong>
<p> </p>
<strong>Jamie:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>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.</p>
<strong>Peter:<br /><br /></strong>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Jamie:</strong></p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Q: What is the technique you use to make the plot hybrid fictional?</strong><br /> <br /><strong>Jamie:</strong><br /><br />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.</p>
<p><strong>Q: 'Steal This Film' was a critique of the international intellectual property regimes. Would this film also be similarly advocative?</strong><br /> <br /><strong>Jamie:</strong><br /><br />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.</p>
<p><strong>Q: Peter, do you share Jamie's passion for Intellectual Property?</strong><br /> <br /><strong>Peter:</strong><br /><br />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.</p>
<p><img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/stf.jpg/image_preview" alt="stf" height="400" width="284" /> <img class="image-inline image-inline" src="uploads/copy_of_steal_this_film_2.jpg/image_preview" alt="steal this film" height="400" width="280" /></p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/dark-fibre-files'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/dark-fibre-files</a>
</p>
No publishersiddharthhistories of internet in Indiainternet and societyDigital AccessIntellectual Property RightsYouTubeart and interventionPiracyOpen Accessinnovationdigital artists2011-08-04T04:41:31ZBlog EntryThe Future of the Moving Image
https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/future-of-the-moving-image
<b>All dissimilar technologies are the same in their own way, but all similar technologies are uniquely different. This was probably at the core of the zeitgeist at the international seminar on “The Future of Celluloid” hosted by the Media Lab at the Jadavpur University, Kolkata, at which Nishant Shah, Director - Research CIS, presented a research paper. Practitioners, film makers, artists, theoreticians and academics, blurring the boundaries of both their roles and their disciplines and areas of interest, came together to move beyond convergence theories – to explore the continuities, conflations, contestations and confusions that Internet Technologies have led to for earlier technologies, but specifically for the technology of the moving image.</b>
<h2 align="left"> How Digital Cinema changes the notion of authorship...<br /></h2>
<p>The
concerns that emerged at the <a class="external-link" href="http://medialabju.org/about.html">Jadavpur University Media Lab</a>'s international seminar on The Future of Celluloid, were manifold and not confined to cinema or the moving image. These are
concerns that are voiced on all realms of cultural production, where
the traditional forms feel stranded at digital
intersections, threatened by the emergence of new cultural
productions which are so much more quintessentially the form and ideal
that the traditional forms aspired to.</p>
<p>The blog, as we saw at the
“<a href="https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/the-anxiety-of-the-future-and-internet-technologies" class="external-link">Writing the Future Conference</a>” was seen as a threat and more
fundamentally replacing the novel form. Ars electronica or digital music has long since played the swan song of traditional
orchestration practices. Similarly, the digital film (often broadcast
on video sharing spaces like YouTube and MySpace) or even mainstream
feature films that embody digital technologies of hypervisualisation, show necessarily more than celluloid could ever capture. As <a class="external-link" href="http://www.cscsarchive.org/Members/ashish">Ashish
Rajadhyaksha</a> pointed out, “The capacity to pay almost infinite
attention to the celluloid image was made possible only with the
digitisation of the celluloid image”.</p>
<p>Through
the different presentations, this strain of thought was apparent – will we
lose celluloid altogether? Is the future of cinema going to be in
infantile pre-lapsarian representations of smiling/dancing/gurgling
babies and furry pets made by indulgent mothers and doting pet
owners? When cinema transitions from deep celluloid to shallow
pixels, will the loss in depth also result in the death of meaning
and processes of reading the image? And finally, the question
that seems to surface, sometimes in the guise of academic concern,
sometimes in the shape of alarm and anxiety, and sometimes in the
form of paranoia and raging uncertainty: “Is this the end of
Celluloid? “ to which <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Hanson">Matt Hanson</a>, who presented his open source film <a class="external-link" href="http://aswarmofangels.com/">A Swarm of Angels</a>, nuancedly added: "Only the end of celluloid as we know it!”</p>
<p>In my presentation titled ´Of Pranksters, Jesters and Clowns –
YouTube Videos and Conditions of Collaborative Authorship´ I made a
call to identify these questions as symptomatic of another more deep
seated anxiety which makes for a fundamental revisiting of the
relationship between the author, the text and the reader. Looking
particularly at YouTube videos and the kind of arguments that have
surrounded them – on copyright, defamation, plagiarism, piracy,
sampling, remix, authorship, ownership – I proposed that at the
centre of all these anxieties is the question of authorship, what
constitutes it and the need to expand the scope of authorship
by looking at the series of engagements that happen online.</p>
<p> I presented two cases to make my argument. The first was the case
of <a class="external-link" href="http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ">13-month-old Holden Lenz</a>, dancing to Prince’s
<em>Let’s Go Crazy.</em> In February 2007, Stephanie Lenz’s
family had a digital equivalent of a Kodak moment. Her 13-month-old son Holden, pushing a walker across her kitchen floor,
started moving to the addictive rhythms of Prince’s <em>Let’s Go
Crazy </em>song and Stephanie recorded him on her
digicam. Wanting more of the family to share the joy, she uploaded
the video on to YouTube and it was viewed scores of times. Laughs
were shared, gaps were bridged, digital technologies brought
families scattered across time-zones and lifestyles together.</p>
<p>However, the lawyers at
Universal Music did not seem to share the enthusiasm or the joy. They fired off a notice to YouTube asking them to remove the video because
it amounted to a copyright infringement. YouTube, fearing legal ramifications, removed the video. Stephanie Lenz approached the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which challenged Universal’s
claims that held Lenz liable for up to 150,000 USD in fines for
sharing the 29 seconds of her son dancing. While it is very easy to
draw the battle-lines and look upon the well educated, highly paid
lawyers of Universal as ‘idiots’ who spent probably millions of
dollars in starting the legal battle, I think there is more at play
here than who is right and who is wrong. What is really being
debated, is not whether Lenz indulged in wilful copyright
infringement or not, but the questions of who is an author, what are
the mechanisms of attribution, and how do we understand these in the
complex digital worlds that we populate?</p>
<p>Historically, the author
was constructed as a communitarian figure whose work depended on and
was enhanced by the collaborations and the collective knowledge of
the people s/he interacted with. Chaucer, to quote the most canonical
example, for instance, was recognised as the author of <em>The Canterbury
Tales</em> only after the print industry finds its footing, thus
neglecting the fact that the text was heavily distorted, enhanced,
mutated, corrected, revised, edited and transformed by the various
users of the manuscripts, who were not merely audience or receptors
but also collaborative authors of the text. It is only with the
establishment of the cultural industries, that such a fluid
understanding of authorship gets crystalised into specific forms of
engagement, where the author, the reader, the distributor, the
consumer, the audience and the end user are all clearly defined and
contained within presumed roles.</p>
<p>It is the blurring of these
boundaries in the digital world that leads to the kind of debates
that we observe around the Stephanie Lenz case. The inability of the
newly emerging digital cultural industry to recognise different forms
of engagement – remixing, sampling, embedding, referencing,
distributing, editing, etc. – as creative and productive forms of
authorship is at the basis of the anxieties that run amok in these
debates. My presentation made a call for not only a
de-criminalisation of pirate positions in the realm of cultural
production, but also to recognise and celebrate the various
conditions of collaborative authorship – be it by Holden Lenz who
probably made the song twice as popular than it was, or by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.avrilbandaids.com/">Avril
Lavigne fans </a>who went on a spree to make her song <em>Girlfriend, </em> the
first video to be viewed one million times on Youtube – not merely
as derivative or acts of prank and jests, but as legitimate and
distinctive forms of authorship which expand the scope of the
cultural object and give it unprecedented layers of meaning and
engagement.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/future-of-the-moving-image'>https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/future-of-the-moving-image</a>
</p>
No publishernishantinternet and societyPiracyIntellectual Property RightsYouTubeinternet artCyberculturesNew Pedagogies2008-11-11T09:06:57ZBlog Entry