Indian copyright laws most fair
By Bala Shah

Washington-based International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), founded in 1984, is a private sector coalition set up to protect the copyrights of US-based organizations. The IIPA coalition has seven member associations including the Business Software Alliance (BSA).  The BSA members include tech giants like Adobe, Apple, HP, IBM, EMC, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP and others.

IIPA’s remaining 6 member associations include Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

IIPA is ideologically driven by the need to protect the copyrights and profits of its members.  Everything else is secondary.

On April 23, 2010, I had reported on IIPA publishing a special report on copyright protection and enforcement which gave the thumbs down to India.  In fact, IIPA has recommended to the US Government that it keeps India on the Priority Watch List in 2010.  As in the past, IIPA quotes some questionable figures and even gave a kick to the highly regarded open source movement in India.

But Consumers International (CI), an independent global campaigning voice for consumers, has found that Indian copyright laws are the most balanced as compared to other countries. CI has 220 member organizations in 115 countries.  The Consumer International (CI) annual assessment of IP legislation in 34 countries reveals:

- Copyright laws are unfairly penalising consumers
- Study shows that the United States tries to export stringent laws to developing countries, while itself having relatively balanced law
- 34-country assessment shows Indian copyright laws to be the most fair, but with still more room for improvement; it also shows the specific areas where India is lacking
- Assessment also shows global increase in punitive copyright legislation to prevent fair use of copyrighted materials
- The ten most fair copyright regimes are to be found in India, Lebanon, Israel, United States, Indonesia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Morocco, Sweden, and Pakistan (in descending order of fairness, with India being most fair). Even these countries were found lacking in many parameters, and are not as balanced as they can be

The Indian legal survey for this CI report was carried out by the non profit Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) based in Bangalore.  CIS’s Programme Manager, Pranesh Prakash, has written an article giving an Indian perspective to the IIPA and CI reports.

(Techgoss had published the following article on April 23, 2010)

USA IP Alliance:  thumbs down to India
By Bala Shah

Despite some flaws, capitalism has proved to be the only system that has brought material prosperity to India.  One of the essential elements of capitalism is respect and reward of the men and women who own copyright.  The trick is to find a balance between copyright and the immediate need to help the poor.

Washington-based International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) is a private sector coalition, founded in 1984, to protect the copyrights of US-based organizations. IIPA’s seven member associations are: the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

IIPA is ideologically driven by the need to protect the copyrights and profits of its members.  Everything else is secondary.

IIPA member the Business Software Alliance consists of Adobe, Apple, EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft and SAP.  The Business Software Alliance uses IIPA to ensure their software is not pirated by anyone within or outside USA.

IIPA’s 2010 special report on copyright protection and enforcement gives the thumbs down to India.  In fact,  IIPA has recommended to the US Government that it keeps India on the Priority Watch List in 2010.

The IIPA report about India makes the following points

“
Piracy - physical, Internet and over mobile devices — continues at high levels in India. While there was some enforcement progress in 2009, enforcement is still not effective in deterring piracy.

Police should increase the number of suo moto (e.g., ex officio) raids; and reforms at every level are needed to reduce huge court backlogs, eliminate procedural hurdles, and address long court delays that result in an insufficient number of criminal convictions and damage awards in civil cases. Anti-piracy enforcement continues to be fragmented and the enforcement agencies lack training to effectively undertake Internet piracy cases.

This year a copyright amendment bill is expected to be introduced — after years of delay — into the Parliament. Until the bill is actually introduced, however, we will not know whether it has been modified from prior drafts to fully and properly implement the WIPO Internet treaties. Prior drafts were woefully inadequate and India desperately needs an effective regime to counter growing Internet piracy. Both optical disc and anti-camcording legislation are needed. With strong copyright industries and fast growing Internet and broadband penetration, India should take action immediately to redress these deficiencies before they become more serious problems.

Significant market access restrictions that affect the motion picture, entertainment software and business software industries continue uncorrected.
“

In this report, IIPA tells its members that it is trying to get the Indian Government to license the manufacture of Optical Discs to reduce piracy, but it is meeting stiff resistance from the largest Optical Disc manufacturer in India - Moser Baer. This dispute has been dragging on for a few years.

As in the past,  IIPA quotes some very questionable figures.  IIPA quotes a joint India Business Council and Ernst & Young report which claims that the Indian film industry lost an estimate $1 Billion and 575,000 jobs in 2008 due to piracy.

According to this IIPA report, Indian Corporate end-user piracy (unauthorized use of business software in a business setting) causes by far the largest losses to the U.S. software industry in India .  Apparently,  the entire software piracy in India can be pegged at $1.5 Billion.

IIPA also talks about its wins in this report.  It has teamed up with the Government of Karnataka to set up a state-wide Software Asset Management program.  Maharashtra has also launched an educational and awareness program.  Also, in 2009, IIPA training of Indian cinema hall employees resulted in 14 forensic matches of camcording piracy being tracked back to cinemas in India.  Apparently, such camcording accounts for 90 percent of all newly released Indian movies being pirated.

IIPA reserves its final kick for the popular open source movement which has done much to benefit Indians.  The IIPA report says: “The industry is also concerned about moves by the Indian government to consider mandating the use of open source software and software of only domestic origin. Though such policies have not yet been implemented, IIPA and BSA urge that this area be carefully monitored.