Francis Gurry, director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a UN agency created in 1967 “to encourage creative activity, to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world,” gave a speech at the opening of India’s 5th International Forum on Creativity and Inventions in which he stressed that jailing convicted illegal file-sharers was not the solution to piracy.

“I don’t believe we are going to win this, (to) find the solution by putting teenagers in jail,” said Gurry. “I think that is not going to win public sympathy.”

“Part of the battle here is to sensitize the public to the fact that there is a real issue involved. It is not simply a victimless crime,” he added.

He noted that the real problem is the enormous amount of stress that the copyright system is under as the world evolves from physical to digital media. consumption.

At the same conference India’s Minister for Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma remarked that there needs to be a better balance in intellectual property systems.

While rights holders needs a secure environment to protect their profits, it is equally important to ensure that the benefits of innovation and knowledge are shared. In this respect, he underlined the need to ensure universal health and education, to alleviate poverty and to reduce the knowledge divide.

It was just a few days prior that both Brazil and Pakistan submitted proposals to a meeting of the WIPO’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement in which they too said that piracy enforcement can’t be a “one size fits all approach,” and that some countries have a different economic reality.

While no country has discussed physically jailing illegal file-sharers, some countries like France and South Korea have enacted “three-strikes” legislation that effectively creates a locked door to the online world.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

When it comes to countries in North America, it’s not often that India reaches the headlines unless a Canadian or an American is involved in the story. Then again, there is the occasional report that does offer a small glimpse into what it is like to live in the digital environment of India. A blogger from India recently wrote a piece about the new surveillance laws of India and the arguments used to pass it as well as some of the provisions that were mentioned seemed surprisingly similar to that of laws being brought forth to legislators in countries like Australia, Britain and what is currently being talked about in the United States.

Sometimes, reports like these raises the question of validity, so we took some initiative and verified what was happening through a business article writing in 2007 that suggests that the Indian security market then was worth $170 million. In December of 2008, though, an article essentially proved that legislation referenced in that article was, in fact, passed in India.

The legislation that is being discussed was known as “The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill”. The posting says that under these new laws and amendments, the government is now allowed to “intercept messages from mobile phones, computers and other communication devices to investigate any offence. Not just cognizable offence, the kind you witnessed in Mumbai 26/11, but any offence.”

Those two sentences alone sounds like the US’s FISA act on steroids. It could very well have been inspired by laws from the United States, but other provisions discussed sounds more like provisions currently being proposed in Australia. the blogger writes, “Around 45 amendments have been made to the original Act, which now treats both publishers of online pornography and its consumers on equal footing. A law so sweeping in its powers that it allows a police officer in the rank of a sub-inspector to walk in or break in to the privacy of your home and see if you were surfing porn or not.”

It’s an observation that would make just about any digital rights activist’s skin crawl. The blogger creatively sums up a number of provisions with the following:

• Thou shall not author a joke. Not even forward one
• Thou shall not surf Bollywood news
• Thou shall not watch porn

As reported by MediaNama, the bill passed the lower house in a hurry and without debate.

Wikipedia is also keeping tabs on the legislation saying that “The Bill has since been passed in the Parliament on December 23, 2008. It is awaiting assent of the President and formal notification. The Bill as passed has many changes from the earlier draft indicated in the previous paragraph and incorporates the recommendations made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee.”

Apparently, one of the arguments going back and forth looked a bit like this:

‘So what?’ is the familiar rhetoric. Why fear if you’ve got nothing to hide? Why should law abiding citizens be bothered about some ‘inevitable invasion’ into privacy in the wake of increasing terror attacks? After all the perpetrators of terror are known to use Internet and other modern communication tools to plan and execute deadly strikes like that happened in Mumbai.

There is only one answer and it is a Thomas Jefferson quote: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

One observation one can make from this legislation is that it almost appears to be taking some of the worst ideas proposed by many countries around the world and gluing them together in a piece of legislation. It seems to be just another disturbing instance of governments around the world gaining sweeping new powers, sacrificing privacy in the process.

There’s an interesting report from The times of India where there is a problem – there’s not enough piracy courts to deal with the load of busted pirates.

Of course, for the average North American, the concept of a “piracy court” is pretty much unheard of. Generally speaking, when someone gets sued for copyright infringement, they go through a regular court system just like any other case. Judging by what this report suggests, there is a court set aside in India to deal specifically with alleged pirates.

It may seem like overkill, but not only is there a court specifically set aside for piracy cases, the court is bogged down by the sheer volume of cases it has to deal with. The cases are “bailable” but people caught up in the system, it’s been extremely difficult. From the report:

Take the case of Madala Krishna Prasad who was arrested on charges of video piracy in Ongole on July 22, 2008.

He was remanded in judicial custody the next day. But when the bail petition was moved by his counsel, the judge expressed his helplessness as the case did not fall under his jurisdiction.

Then the counsel, K Venkata Reddy, moved another bail petition before the additional chief metropolitan magistrate court, which is the designated court for such offences. He rejected to hear the petition because the remand was in a different court.

Then the counsel moved a lunch motion in the high court on Friday. Justice P Swarup Reddy granted bail to the accused in this case. Now the counsel has to go to the Ongole court again to submit the bail documents to secure freedom for the accused . In all the accused will be in jail for more than 12 days for an offence that is bailable. “We have heard of similar cases in Anantapur and elsewhere in the state in this type of offences,” he said.

It’s not entirely clear what the report is specifically referring to when it says ‘video piracy’ and a Google search of the persons name only refers to the above article. Whether it means videos being sold on bootleg DVDs or videos being downloaded online is unclear. One might hope that resorting to courts being set aside in North America won’t be necessary.

India is said to have the second fastest growing emerging economies in the world. With such a rich and diverse economy, one might assume the entertainment industry is doing well.

This is not the case according to WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) According to a The Hindu:

The WIPO Copyrights Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, collectively termed as Internet Treaties, were negotiated in 1996 under the auspices of WIPO. But India is yet to sign them.

“India has got huge information, film and entertainment industries. For its own benefit, the country must become a signatory to the two treaties. It would ensure a strong protection about the use of creative works on the world wide web not only in that country but also abroad,” Director of Copyright Law at WIPO Jorgen Savy Blomqvist told PTI here.

With internet, web piracy is also fast gaining grounds in the world. As Indian products generate big money in that country and in the overseas, signing the treaties would ensure that producers of creative works in India get their fair share of income the products generate abroad, the Director said.

“It will provide an enormous boost to India’s cultural and creative industries. Through digital networks, that country’s music, art, literature, and folklore can reach new markets throughout the world, and be delivered directly to paying customers around the globe,” he said.

It’s interesting that someone is telling the country with the second fastest growing economy how the country can do better. It’s also interesting to suggest that signing the treaties will suddenly put Bollywood movies on the same shelf as Hollywood movies in movie fans collections.

Of course, who is this Jorgen Savy Blomqvist from WIPO anyway? We weren’t able to find anything specific about this individual, however, we were able to find a previous posting that seems fairly revealing. On March 28, 2007, there was a report on the Financial Express about how piracy is killing India’s entertainment industry. It wasn’t Blomqvist suggesting this, but the the pressure to somehow deal with piracy was certainly present, only the organization that was making these demands was from the USIBC. This stands for the US-India Business Council. From the report:

“Piracy is a growing global epidemic and the proportions of the menace has reached such critical levels that the very existence of global entertainment is at stake,” said Vijay John Lazarus, president, Indian Music Industry (IMA).

IMA and USIBC have chalked out a strategy to fight piracy. Vickery added, “First we have to conduct a study including Indian losses in films, television, music and video games. Secondly, we need to educate people about piracy.”

Timali Sengupta, CEO, T Sengupta Associates, added that there was a need for legislation and utilisation of optical disc technology to aid combat piracy, scientifically. The governments of the US and India have to be more proactive in combating cross-border piracy, agreed the Indian and US delegates present at the event.

So, clearly, this isn’t the first time India was pressured, only this time, it seems the pressure has increased. To summarize, the US-based entertainment industry operating in India demanded action to combat piracy and now WIPO is coming in to make demands that the country sign the WIPO treaties.

Canadians who follow what is going on in Canada with respect to WIPO may get a sense of de-ja-vu. In 2007, congressmen wrote a letter to the Canadian government saying how rampant piracy is in Canada and how it would hurt the economy. This surfaced just after the infamous statistics groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) was flooding the Canadian media with which have gone from anywhere between 20% – 90% piracy rates within Canada. At best, the statistics were deeply flawed at best since they were never consistent.

One must remember the key difference between Canada and India – Canada signed (but not ratified) the WIPO treaties. India, on the other hand, didn’t sign them at all. Canada not ratifying the treaties didn’t prevent the industry acting like it had – which was mainly the flawed logic that led to how Canada supposedly had an international obligation to try to reform copyright laws any way the foreign entertainment lobby saw fit. Has India become the new target for law ratification. It may be too early to tell, but the indications suggest that it may be so. If the indications are accurate, India may be faced with being pressured to implement laws that largely won’t address piracy, but rather, consumer control in favor of the largely foreign copyright lobby.

Hat tip: Michael Geist

India is expanding a government-led program to provide free, local language software to all of its citizens, as it tries to broaden computer use in the country.

The move to widely distribute free desktop applications and tools could be seen as a setback for Microsoft Corp., but the Indian government says it has no agenda to promote open source-software over proprietary products. What’s more, all of the applications and tools run on Windows, while some do not run on Linux, and any move to expand computer use in one of the world’s most populous countries could arguably benefit Microsoft

India’s Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a Pune-based research and development (R&D) organization of the Indian government, is distributing CDs with the software in Tamil and Hindi, two important languages in India. C-DAC plans to introduce versions of the software in other Indian languages later this year.

The success of the project depends on support, and big orders, from governments. The loss of such a potentially huge, and relatively technically sophisticated market, will be a serious blow.

The Indian Ministry of Education dismissed the laptop as “paedagogically suspect”. Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee said: “We cannot visualise a situation for decades when we can go beyone the pilot stage. We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools.”

Banerjee said if money were available it would be better spent on existing education plans.

According to the Department of Telecommunications, blogs which were blacked out three days after the Mumbai blasts will soon be restored.

Post 7/11, the Government decided to block sites without saying why and the ISPs decided to go ahead, do one better and block all blogs.

The Centre issued an order to block 22 websites after a two-page write up containing derogatory references to Islam appeared in a blog.

The country’s 153 internet service providers (ISP) have blocked 17 websites since last week on federal government orders.

Some of these sites belong to Google’s Blogspot, a leading international web log hosting service.

Indian bloggers say that the decision is an attack on freedom of speech.