Techdirt. Stories filed under "bollywood" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "bollywood"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:00:00 PDT US Chamber Of Commerce: Bollywood Is So Successful Without Strong Copyrights That It Will Fail Unless India Strengthens Its Copyrights Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130612/16480623431/us-chamber-commerce-bollywood-is-so-successful-without-strong-copyrights-that-it-will-fail-unless-india-strengthens-its.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130612/16480623431/us-chamber-commerce-bollywood-is-so-successful-without-strong-copyrights-that-it-will-fail-unless-india-strengthens-its.shtml India needs stronger copyright laws, because Bollywood is so successful. Right upfront, it notes how successful things have been:
Boasting the largest film industry in the world, the creative sector lies at the heart of the Indian culture and economy. As one of India’s largest employment sectors, an endless array of local professionals from technical, theatrical, and creative backgrounds are helping churn out 1,000 films in more than 20 languages annually.
You'd think those are signs that copyright law was working (largest film industry in the world, largest employment sectors, over 1,000 films produced annually -- about double Hollywood) and that this would imply that whatever level of copyright there is in India -- which is supposed to be an incentive to creativity -- was doing a decent job. But, no, apparently it's all broken.
The government, however, must improve national intellectual property (IP) laws and enforcement if it is going to seize on this opportunity and gain recognition in the global market and further empower local creators.
Hmm. Wait, you just said that it's the world's largest film industry and an unqualified success. So, why does it need to improve those laws and enforcement?
Specifically, Indian copyright law is unclear with the 2012 Copyright Act amendments further complicating and contradicting previous rule of law. Furthermore, the 2012 Act provides for broad exceptions that are incompatible with international norms. Also measuring relatively loware enforcement efforts, which are weak in application and don’t provide widely available civil and procedural remedies for copyright infringement.
And, yet, this laxity incentivized the creation of nearly double the films that Hollywood produces. Perhaps -- and I'm just suggesting things here -- the "international norms" and the higher levels of enforcement are holding back the industries elsewhere. If anything, this report seems to suggest that other countries should move towards broad exceptions, since it appears to have been quite successful in India.

Furthermore, much of the paper seems to suggest that India needs to fix its copyright laws to embrace the international opportunity for its films -- but that (again) makes no sense. India's IP laws don't apply outside of India, so they have no impact on the international opportunities, which are governed by other IP laws. And, again, if the industry is doing great in India (with little enforcement and greater exceptions), doesn't this indicate that India should push for the same elsewhere to better embrace that international opportunity?

It's quite a world in which the US Chamber of Commerce seems to be arguing that an example of a success story should lead to that successful model emulating less successful markets. I don't know how much money the MPAA pays the US Chamber of Commerce for these kinds of pieces, but it's not getting its money's worth.

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]]> wtf? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130612/16480623431 Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:08:21 PST Bollywood No Longer Worrying About Piracy As Studios Keep Setting New Records At The Box Office Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130218/03033922013/bollywood-no-longer-worrying-about-piracy-as-studios-keep-setting-new-records-box-office.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130218/03033922013/bollywood-no-longer-worrying-about-piracy-as-studios-keep-setting-new-records-box-office.shtml grow massively and to thrive, even as piracy was rampant. That certainly seemed to contradict the old claim that infringement kills the incentives for content creation. And now, according to the Economic Times, many Indian studios have more or less stopped even talking about "piracy" because the box office is booming. The secret? It shouldn't be a surprise, since it's exactly what people have been talking about for years: making the authorized versions of the content more widely available more quickly in a variety of formats, thereby cutting off one of the main reasons why people seek out infringing copies:
A few years ago, theatre releases were limited to tier-I and tier-II cities due to high costs of prints. It took between three months and a year for a film to be released elsewhere. Consequently, films reached television and home video only after six months of a theatrical release. Pirates gleefully filled that vacuum by bombarding consumers with cheap optical discs....

Not anymore. The brightest stars of the Rs 100-crore constellation are theatres and prints.... Digital prints, which cost one-fifth of analog prints, have facilitated the swift reach of movies across the country.
There's an infographic that shows most movie releases in 2011 were shown on about double the number of movies screens as similar movies just the year before. That's a massive increase in availability for theater showings. As for the home market, while it still competes with pirated copies, quality seems to be winning:
According to Dwyer, the better-off who earlier paid to have high-quality cinema systems at home are no longer interested in poor quality (pirated) copies. "The quality of DVDs and Blu-ray discs is excellent with extra features and at a reasonable price."
While the article still says that there's a lot of infringement going on, it's just fading into the background for the most part, especially given the record-setting revenue numbers.
For one, producers are happy with the current box-office fortunes. There is also no evidence to show big hits suffering from online piracy. On the contrary, data crawls suggest that the most downloaded films are nearly always the biggest hits, according to Lawrence Liang of Bangalore's Alternative Law Forum, one of the authors of the India chapter of the Media Piracy report.
And, thus, the studios have finally realized that paying more attention to improving the authorized market is probably more important than "stomping out piracy."
What has really changed is the focus on piracy. As the case of AACT shows, the struggles against pirates are few and far between to make even news, leave alone act as a deterrent. "The tendency has been to focus always on the numbers we are capturing rather than looking at leaked markets," says Uday Singh, managing director, MPDA.
Of course, the article is still full of dire warnings about how the studios need to stay vigilant or everything might fall apart, but that seems based on random hyperbole, rather than any actual evidence.

None of this should be even remotely surprising. For years we've been pointing out that if you make works available, make them convenient and reasonably priced, and stop treating your customers like criminals, people will pay. Sure, there will always be some piracy, but those people are unlikely to pay no matter what, for the most part, and you just need to stop worrying about them and focus on giving more fans more reasons to actually pay. It appears that India is an example of a place where that's actually happening.

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