Police:  Is internet piracy illegal?
By Techgirl

There is a fine balance between the often astronomical prices charged by software companies and doing all that is necessary to spread computing in developing countries.  If you try to charge a poor man thousands of rupees for an operating system or to use MS Word, do not pretend to be shocked if he makes a copy rather than buy it. Some States like Kerala and Tamil Nadu have to be commended for pushing open source so that their middle and lower classes can cross the digital divide.

In May, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) publicly announced that it lost $2 billion of revenue in 2007 due to pirated software.  The positive side of this was that the piracy of software on Indian personal computers had dropped to 69 percent in keeping with global trends.  As India gets more affluent, customers will not mind paying like their counterparts in the west.

The Indian Music Industry (IMI) has a more serious problem.  With the advent of new phones and chips, mobile phones can record hours of pirated music from the internet.  Of the 10,000 cases of music piracy in India, only 1,200 have been convicted.

Both the software and music industry have launched a two pronged attack – education and punishment.  A carrot and stick policy.

You know there needs to be more education and the carrot has to be bigger when at the Indian Music Industry(IMI) seminar on piracy in West Bengal last week,  an Inspector General of Police said that he did not know that downloading music from the internet was a crime.  The seminar was told that such copyright violations could lead to six months jail and/or Rs. 50,000 fine. 

While the senior police officer has to be commended for his truthfulness and honesty, it just goes to show that education should always be the first step.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog
http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com