Piracy scourge part 3: regulating VPN and file sharing apps a tricky road

Adgully’s four-part indepth series on Film Piracy puts the spotlight on this pertinent issue. Part 1 of the series dwelled on how and where piracy takes place, piracy in the digital era, addressing the deep-rooted cultural issues and more.

Part 2 of this series took a look at the legal provisions available to tackle piracy and whether they have been adequate to curb this menace. Also, what are the alternate steps that producers are taking to crack down on piracy.

Part 3 of this series identifies the various challenges faced in successfully tackling piracy and industry experts explain why it might not be possible to end piracy once and for all in the short term at least. This part will also look at VPN and app regulation.

Also read:

Mapping the piracy scourge Part 1: From theatres to Telegram

Mapping the piracy scourge Part 2: Stringent laws alone cannot end piracy

Last month, US law enforcement agencies busted Sparks Group, an international piracy ring that illegally distributed on the worldwide web almost every movie released by major production studios, as well as TV shows. Since 2011, its UK-born ringleader George Bridi has been circumventing copyright protections on DVDs and Blu-Ray discs to illegally share movies online, US attorney Damian Williams said in a press release. Europol, Eurojust, and law enforcement authorities in 18 countries, from Canada to Cyprus, assisted in the investigation.

This transnational nature of piracy is one of the key challenges faced by law enforcement agencies across the world. Since courts face jurisdictional challenges, the only available option is to find technical solutions to the scourge of piracy.

Prince Pictures producer S Lakshman Kumar considered it to be a complicated issue and added that it might not be possible to end piracy once and for all in the short term at least. He felt that the industry had to cut down the distribution.

According to Kumar, “We can never stop technology development. However, distribution is the problem. If we are able to prevent illegal distribution, there is no motivation and incentive for the pirates to create pirated copies. We have to cut down distribution and the logistic routes. Multiple stakeholders are responsible and each one has a role to play. For example, ISPs have a role. They can do a lot of things because they can track what is being downloaded.”

People with interest and intent should discuss the preventive methods with government support as the law allows for punitive action, he added.

Mumbai Movie Studios CEO Naveen Chandra also agreed that there is no organised effort to contain piracy. The government acted against pornographic sites and was able to shut them down. The same way the government has to act on piracy. The second reason for the pervasive nature of piracy, according to Chandra, is the arrival of streaming platforms. “When a film is released on a streaming service, people watch it across the country on the same day. Earlier, those who wanted to pirate films used to take a ticket, get inside the theatre and capture the movie. Now they are able to do high-quality streaming better than theatrical films,” he pointed out.

No organised effort

Naveen Chandra noted that there is absolutely no single solution to solve piracy in the country and added that it has to operate at multiple levels. The police – the cyber police – have to be extremely strong and they have to be empowered and equipped to handle this.

This is the typical threat that needs to be dealt with by the strength of the police force, affirmed Chandra. “It cannot be done outside the system. We need to have very strong laws which will act as a deterrent against piracy. In the US, for instance, there are extremely strong laws against piracy. And once they go after such criminals, they won’t be able to operate anymore. Here in India, we don’t have a very strong policing system,” he added.

Block X Technologies’ Mugil Chandran, an anti-piracy expert, opined that all stakeholders needed to take piracy seriously. Touch the consciousness of the audience. Awareness is the necessity, he said. Sadly, there is no major body to regulate piracy. Chandran deplored the fact that no industry, be it Bollywood or Kollywood, has any piracy wing as part of the creative team. They don’t have a system.

So, what can be done at the filmmaker’s level? “First of all, they have to take anti-piracy seriously. It is a fact that you cannot end piracy completely. The first week of a film’s release is the most critical to recouping the money. The best way to make it work is to make it completely accessible as easily as possible to the public, just like in the music industry,” Chandran suggested.

Continuing further, he said, “Music does not exist completely in its previous form. It has become almost royalty-free. You opt for platforms like Spotify and YouTube for high-quality audio, which you know is from some legitimate source, and hence it is good. And hence, I am in a responsible position as an audience. Similarly, in cinema what has to happen – and I assume it will happen drastically – is the first day of the release of the content as many people should get the copy. That is what OTT is doing. That is the intention. Before the process of piracy begins, I should have a legitimate way to access good-quality content,” he added.

To combat streaming piracy, technologically there are things that streamers can do. What is recorded illegally should not be the same experience you get out of the legitimate platform. “OTT platforms have to create an experience that cannot be duplicated,” Chandran said.

VPN and app regulation

VPN (Virtual Private Network) is meant to protect privacy and not be a cover for piracy. VPN regulation is a big issue that we have not solved at all. This year, a slew of movie production companies sued VPN provider LiquidVPN over its marketing efforts that were construed as encouraging piracy.

Another controversial area is app regulation. Apps are now regulated privately, not by governments. “Google and Apple are the only two companies regulating them. They decide the legitimacy of apps. Governments are able to do that; we have seen it with TikTok, PUBG, etc.,” noted Chandran.

He further said, “Telegram does not have file size issues. There is no regulation there. You need to find a way to regulate it. If we believe in a copyright-free IP-free world, then it is fine. But if we believe in intellectual property we have to find this balance.”

In the last one and half years, says Mugil Chandran, his service mode has shifted with almost 80% of content being is used through applications like Telegram. “Telegram does not have file size issue. We literally are part of every single group. And we can’t take down everything, because it is business also. If we do that, we lose visibility where privacy happens. There is no regulation there. You need to find a way to regulate it,” he adds.
According to him, we cannot regulate screen recording. It is not possible, because nobody can check what is on your phone; then it becomes a privacy issue.
“Targeting the end-user is not the solution. Creating awareness is the key. We have not bothered to take action against the application. You don’t have the technology to prove that person has watched it. Every film industry should have an anti-piracy wing. It all boils down to the governmental intervention,” he adds.

When asked if banning Telegram is a solution, Chandran replied that he does not come from a ‘ban culture.’ What is perplexing for anti-piracy agents like him is why Telegram or any such platform should have such an infinite scale of file size sharing.

“I don’t see why a platform for interpersonal communication should have such a huge bandwidth for file sharing. Then your purpose is different. I am not for banning Telegram. Because they offer privacy to my content; in Telegram, you cannot monitor what people are doing. WhatsApp is not as prevalent as Telegram as a privacy medium because it has an issue with file size. And there is some level of regulation as to what is happening,” he explained.

You cannot monitor Telegram as a structure as to what people are doing. Then, what is the solution? “Make it a platform which lets people connect with, but doesn’t allow it to be used as a platform for sharing files at such a scale,” he suggested.

According to Chandran, it is a very thin line. “Anti-piracy law should not become an anti-privacy law, because everything gets vetted and checked. Every conversation cannot be checked. That’s not what we need. What is needed is a bifurcation. If you want a content bifurcation platform, keep it separately. A conversation platform should be separate. I have a right over my conversation. Don’t mix them up. If someone is mixing it up, stop them. Regulate file-sharing platforms,” he added.

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