The key to ending piracy: Join industry action and strong legislation – Part 2

Ending piracy once and for all is like being able to put an end to shoplifting. What can be feasible, and plausible in the current circumstances, is for the various stakeholders to come together and fight at all fronts.

In this two-part series, AdGully seeks to understand the dark underbelly of streaming piracy and the legal remedies. Part 1 of the series covered the legal standpoint, wherein legal experts explained the ground realities as well as broke down the challenges in successfully tackling piracy.

Also read:

Can Indian streamers take on piracy? Legal experts break down the challenges - Part 1

Click here to attend IMAGEXX 2022

Expressing helplessness in countering the menace, Gautam Talwar, Chief Content Officer at MX Player, says that the industry should come together in this regard. He affirms, “We must come together to solve it. It’s weird that you put in so much money, effort, time, energy for everybody and then you go and see it on a pirated site. I think it just hurts all of us, it hurts the business, it hurts the industry, it hurts the platforms. And unfortunately, there is nothing that we can do. If we could have done it, we would have done it; but it’s weird that even for a free platform, the viewership on pirated platforms is phenomenally large. I think it is just a matter of habit; people are so used to pirating that you don’t even want to try the original platform. It’s weird, but I think it’s the consumer behaviour which has to change.”

The streaming ecosystem needs a strong legislation from the government that outlines the policies to safeguard organisations against content piracy within the digital ecosystem, says Dilip Chandra, Vice President, Product & Analytics, aha.

“This needs inclusion of a support process work flow with robust grievance redress mechanism, in the event of a piracy issue by comprising guidelines to stakeholders that control and manage Internet data flow such as Google, Facebook, Telegram, ISPs, etc. Also, there must be an introduction of a policy through which the end consumers who choose to be whistle-blowers and report content piracy are rewarded by the law. Conversely, there should be heavy penalties imposed on people promoting and indulging in streaming piracy,” he asserts.

Piracy affects the bottomline of online streaming companies, costing the industry billions of dollars, points out James Clark, GM - Media & Entertainment, GeoComply.

The root problem

According to Anil Suryavamshi, Associate Vice President, Planning, Carat India, one way to deal with piracy is being reactive. He cites two examples:

• Like it was done for ‘Udta Punjab’ – when the perpetrator was fined Rs 3 lakh and three years of imprisonment (Indian Law of IRM)
• Amazon vs Tamilrockers (US Law of DMCA) – This led to the blocking of the domain

“While having a more stringent legal framework is desirable, cases like the above do not solve the problem at the core (In the above case number one: Rs 3 lakh fine against crores of rupees of loss for the producer; and in case number two: one can easily bring the website back up in a slightly different domain,” he says.

DMCA not enough  

Some experts say that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is not very effective when it comes to containing piracy. What then should be the solution?  

One drawback of DMCA that is mostly applicable to video content producers is the aspect of safe harbour, says Suryavamshi. “This offers immunity to the platforms for any copyright infringement if they promptly remove the contents upon receiving the objection from the copyright holder. The onus of protecting the content is falling on the producer, which can be a daunting task, and very time-sensitive to say the least. If the content owner could not find the content of which the copy was available on one of the platforms for 5-6 hours, then he has already lost the battle,” he explains.

Inadequacy of third-party firms

The problem, say industry insiders, is that the current breed of third-party anti-piracy companies in India involved in content protection is only removing it from social media platforms, websites, cyberlockers, hosting sites, etc. Experts say that more often, they are missing the root causes.

Agreeing to the inadequacy of such anti-piracy agencies, James Clark says that these takedowns are only tackling the outside areas of the issue. The key, according to him, is finding the original sources of these streams.

“Generally speaking, the original sources of pirate materials are re-shared/ re-steamed multiple times. So, unless you can cut the tree down by the root, you will not stop it from growing,” Clark adds.

At the end of the day, says Dilip Chandra, the anti-piracy companies rely on the active support system available with respective companies, that is, social media, websites, etc. “Once a breach has been detected, swift action is needed to deal with the situation. A swift solution has now become imperative as piracy has pivoted towards real-time streaming and lucrative illegal revenue streams,” he insists.

Once again, says Chandra, the legislation or policy should essentially cover the operating guidelines for these bodies to support the ecosystem. According to him, the key to tackle the issue is to increase the speed of removing the pirated streams.

“While prosecution might be a longer process that happens after the event, withdrawing the illegal content from the Internet as swiftly as possible is the best way to deter people involved in piracy and drive consumers towards legal choices,” he adds.

According to Suryavamshi, given the complexity of the problem for a country of India’s size, it is not feasible to control copyright piracy in its every manifestation through legal means alone. “Copyright law enforcement machinery must succeed in securing exemplary punishment for the kingpins who are guilty of serious violations, rather than attempting to cope with many petty violations,” he says.

He further adds that police records and responses from the right holders show that a majority of right holders are reluctant to file any complaint regarding copyright violations of their works. 

“Firstly, the rights holders should take enough precautions to protect copyright works. If violations come to their notice, they should file complaints with the police. They should also help the police in conducting raids and producing evidence (for example, proof of ownership of works) during the trial by the court,” Suryavamshi adds. 

But regardless of this, he says, having a stringent law process with severe monetary penalty may provide some relief to the creators.