Grave issue of censorship in films addressed at FICCI Frames conference

Mumbai: A session called 'Own, Convert, Protect! Intellectual property as a driver of Innovations & growth’ on monetisation, protection and enforcement was held at FICCI Frames on the first day of the three day conference on the Media and Entertainment industry.

The panel moderated by Mr. Ameet Datta, Srikrishna & Association was attended by Mr. Hank Baker, Vice President, Government Affairs, Asia Pacific, MPA, Mr. Thomas L Vaidya, US Consul General to Mumbai, Mr. Benoit Ginistry, Chief Representative, FIAPF and Mr. Sreedhar Subramaniam, President – India and Middle East, Sony Music Entertainment.

Mr Hank Baker said, "I represent the MPA and our interest is in protecting intellectual rights. The key to that is copyright that gives us the right to exploit it commercially as a business. The other side is enforcement. We spend our time, capital and resources in making movies. Piracy is different today than it was a couple of years ago. The digital world makes it easy to steal our property and soft goods.

"We need more screen density in India. Censorship also causes people to hire content away from legitimate sources because people want to see the director's vision and the complete product. Piracy is a leakage & gets 35% more than box office revenue. It needs to be fixed." He added.

Sridhar Subramaniam said, "Two or three progressions have happened in the last three years. One of them is copyright amendment that gives a lot of rights to the music community. We are grateful for international IPR policies. We have taken court action against piracy and blocked some websites. Statutory and compulsory licensing on the Internet by the government has helped."

"It is important to protect our investment & essential to protect our freedom over copyrights & IPR. It's essential for India to join Europe, South Korea and America in international copyright protection & IPR policies,” concluded, Mr. Benoit Ginistry.