India, one of the world’s biggest film markets, also has one of the bigger piracy rates in the world and the Hollywood and Bollywood studios want to try to put an end to it.
The MPAA and seven Indian companies have signed a coalition intended to fight piracy, with the group working with movie theaters to try to shutdown camcorder recordings, as well as working with ISPs to shut down the ease of Internet piracy.
The industry group would not reveal the budget but did say it would come from its members, the major studios. The MPAA has anti-piracy coalitions in the U.S., the EU and Hong Kong.
“People are becoming more of the same mind,” adds Dan Glickman, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America. “The Indian film industry now understands their product is getting stolen at significant rates.”
According to an Ernst & Young study, piracy cost the Indian economy $959 million and 571,000 jobs in 2008.
Result for: internet piracy
Lord Mandelson has announced this week that the UK will in fact be adopting the highly controversial ‘three strikes’ Internet piracy law, disconnecting multiple time offenders from the Internet while levying heavy fines.
The government added that first time offenders will likely be given a warning, then have their bandwidth restricted after a second offense. Third strike means being disconnected from the Internet, or at least “considered” for disconnection given the crime.
The law will come into effect April 2010, says the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation. Ofcom will be in charge of monitoring the file-sharing of UK citizens.
UK ISP TalkTalk, a strong critic of the bill, came out swinging after the announcement: “What is being proposed is wrong in principle and won’t work in practice. In the event we are instructed to impose extra judicial technical measures we will challenge the instruction in the courts.”
When asked about the material losses for ISPs given disconnection from the Internet for their subscribers, Mandelson added: “I have no expectation of mass suspensions. People will receive two notifications and if it reaches the point [of cutting them off] they will have the opportunity to appeal.”
Another staunch critic of the plan, the Internet Service Providers’ Association believes that copyright holders should be in charge of all costs related to the system, and that ISPs should be reimbursed for all lost customers.
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Result for: internet piracy
A deadline imposed by a court of law ordering that The Pirate Bay block all traffic coming from the Netherlands has passed quietly, AP reports. The order imposes fines for every day that The Pirate Bay does not comply, amounting to $42,000 per day. The deadline has passed, and there is no sign that The Pirate Bay has complied in any way with the order.
According to Stichting Brein, a Dutch group that is involved in a lot of anti-Internet piracy cases, said that the Pirate Bay founders are planning to challenge the Amsterdam District Court ruling, but Brein is confident that the challenge will ultimately fail.
In any case, Brein says that it won’t demand the $42,000 per day in damages unless the site continues to operate in the current form after it is due to be bought on August 27.
