Digital Piracy

 

Introduction

The cyber-crime illustrated above is digital piracy which in simple words can be defined as “copyright infringement online by use of the internet”. It involves uploading, streaming, downloading, and sharing of copyrighted works like books, movies, and music which is beyond legal authorisation for access, use and distribution by other people. Digital piracy deprives the producer of that copyrighted work to get its economic return for their creation, property, and labour. 

Digital piracy is one of the cyber-crimes related to intellectual property rights. Other such online IP crimes include trademarks, patents, and trade secrets.

Parallel to technological advancements in the 21st century, the use of digital media in India, in fact in the world has increased exponentially. Since every coin has two sides, similarly use of digital media has both pros and cons. Among which Digital piracy, where anyone can infringe the right of others by copying and pasting or altering any unique creation created by the author or producer without tracing the offender.

Legality

In order to curb the online copyright issue and digital piracy in India, Section 66E of Information Technology, 2000 provides punishment up to 3 years of imprisonment and fine up to Rs. 2 lakhs for illegal distribution of copyrighted content.

Although, with the increment of online digital piracy, the legislative and the judiciary bodies have taken bold steps to tackle such problems. Recently, the legislators i.e., The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of India has taken initiative to amend the old legislation related to the cinema world i.e. the Cinematographic Act, 1952 and introduce the Cinematographic Amendment Bill, 2019. The bill aims to penalise the offense of digital piracy for an unauthorised camera recording and duplication of films by punishing the offender with a 3 years of imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 10 lakhs by adding Section 6AA in the Act.

Section 6A of the Cinematographic Act says that, “Notwithstanding any law for the time being in force, no person shall without the written authorization of the author be permitted to use any audio visual recording device to knowingly make or transmit or attempt to make or transmit or abet the making or transmission of a copy of a film `or a part thereof”.

Along with the legislative body, the judiciary has also acted vigilantly in tackling the issue of copyright infringement which cause heavy loss in the media industry & ultimately lead to loss of the Indian economy. Through its precedents, Indian judiciary has adopted the concept of “John Doe Orders”

The origin of the word “John Doe Orders” was from England’s King Edward III which means “Anonymous Party”. In this technical world, it has become very difficult to trace the real suspect or culprit violating the provisions of the law of copyright infringement because of hidden identity under different covers. According to the court, if any individual or an entity feels that he/she has created a unique, innovative, and inventive project, then he/she can approach the court under Order 30 Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure to request it to issue John Doe Order and under Order 39 Rule 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, the court has been empowered to issue an injunction order to issue John Doe Order.

The basic idea of issuing such an order is to protect the intellectual property rights of the owner who has the apprehension of suffering loss by the duplication of its project and selling in the market. Upon looking into the matter, the court shall grant the order to cease and desist the sale of the innovative project in the market without authorisation.

 One of the cases in which, the court has ensured the effective implementation of John Doe Order is implemented in case of Viacom 18 Motion Pictures v. Jyoti Cable Network and Ors. In this particular case, on the apprehension that there were pirated contents of the movie Force-2 prior to its release, Viacom 18 moved to Honourable Delhi High Court to issue John Doe Order wherein the court ordered to block all the websites which might infringe the copyright of the owners.

Conclusion

Digital piracy or the online copyright infringement has been highly prevalent in India. It is observed that around 32.5% of the original content is sold in pirated versions which equates to loss to 2 billion dollars to the industry every year. A proper law and more than law, effective execution of those laws needs to be ensured. Further, copyright infringement not only punishes the one who has uploaded the unauthorised content, but also those who download it and stream are liable to be punished. This means that an awareness programme should also be initiated to make the viewers or the consumers of those pirated content aware that what they are doing is illegal.

By: Ms. Hema Modi 

(Core Committee Member, WCSF)

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