The Hindu Business Line : Films, piracy and copyright

The recent furore over the issue of piracy of Malayalam films highlights the need for creative alternatives to the conventional copyright route of protecting intellectual property.

Citizens of Thiruvananthapuram are more or less inured to the tribulations caused by sundry rallies and marches clogging the main arterial road of the city during peak hours. Normally, these are mundane creations of assorted political parties, but last week saw one with a far more glamorous sheen.

Over 2,000 members of the Malayalam film industry, including superstars such as Mammootty and Mohanlal, as well as members of various film industry associations, representing producers, distributors and technicians, marched to the State Secretariat to express gratitude and appreciation for the Left Democratic Front Government's crackdown on piracy.

"Piracy" here refers to unauthorised reproduction and distribution of films. The term itself is not new. It can be traced back to 1879 when Alfred Tennyson made a reference to it in the preface to his poem "The Lover's Tale," in which he mentions that sections of this work "have of late been mercilessly pirated."

`HUGE LOSS'

Such a lack of mercy is apparently dogging the Malayalam film industry, if the charges of its representatives are to be believed. Today, industry sources claim, the Rs 100-crore turnover industry loses Rs 40 to 50 crore annually to piracy. Since December 2006, when the LDF Government gave the go-ahead to the State police to check piracy, nearly 30,000 video libraries have had to shut down.

QUESTION OF ETHICS

Honesty and integrity are values that are universally upheld, especially in socially responsible business activities. And so, it shouldn't be surprising that the Malayalam film industry stalwarts were shouting themselves hoarse, denouncing the venal pirates.

Yet, anyone could equally be forgiven for wondering how many of the stars at the rally, the producers, directors, scriptwriters and artists could honestly put their hands to their chests and swear that they had not stolen themes, scripts, stories and ideas from Hollywood and Bollywood.

This point has not been made to sound facetious. While no one can deny the need to protect intellectual property and ensure fair returns to its legitimate creators, the whole furore over the video/film piracy issue smacks of certain hypocrisy - both on the part of the Malayalam film industry and the LDF Government.

Even as conception of ideas as inviolable property is widely recognised, progressive movements all over the world are now experimenting with more creative ways to deal with copyright and patent laws that will favour the common good.

`COPYLEFT' CONCEPT

In the arena of artistic creation, one widely used solution is the `Creative Commons' licence, a kind of "copyleft" licence which turns copyright on its head by allowing users to share and distribute a creation as a propriety work so long as that same freedom is also granted to other users.

A CASE STUDY

A couple of years ago, Ariana Eunjung Cha, a Washington Post Staff Writer reported the case of a music band called Chuck D and the Fine Arts Militia, who released their single, `No Meaning No', with no restrictions to stop people from circulating free copies on the Internet.

"They posted the entire 3-minute, 12-second song and its various vocal, drum and guitar components online and invited everyone to view, copy, mix, remix, sample, imitate, parody and even criticize it," Cha wrote.

"The result has been the creation of a flood of derivative work ranging from classical twists on the hip-hop piece to video interpretations of the song. The musicians revelled in the instant fan base," says Cha.

"So far", the writer adds, "more than 10 million other creations - ranging from the movie Outfoxed and songs by the Beastie Boys to the British Broadcasting Corp.'s news footage and the tech support books published under the O'Reilly label - have been distributed using these licenses.

LESSONS FOR KERALA

Perhaps there are some pointers for Kerala in this experience. For a government that has recently sworn by Free and Open Source Software - which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed usually free of charge - the LDF ought to be exploring creative alternatives to the problem of film piracy.

A knee-jerk crackdown on video libraries at the instigation of powerful industry interests may not be the best long-term solution.

The writer can be contacted at kgkumar@gmail.com