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The Secretary General’s Desk
Today mobile chip piracy is the latest format of piracy that is affecting the Indian Music Industry.
What is Mobile Chip Piracy and why is it important to the Indian Music Industry?
Today most phones that are being launched in the market have an additional device known as a chip which can be inserted into the phone. This chip is like a storage device. It is equivalent to a floppy or a cassette or a CD. This chip that costs about Rs.500/- can actually store about 12 hrs. of songs.
Is this piracy? Yes it is Piracy. Because you are copying somebody’s else’s work which is governed by the copyright law.
If we can take action against cassette piracy & CD piracy then we must focus and take action against mobile chip piracy.
Why? Because all 3 of them are infringements.
Previously the problem was neither the industry understood the gravity of the problem nor was the police equipped to handle the situation.
The IMI is the first music association in the world that has started taking action against mobile chip piracy and we have managed to conduct more than a 100 mobile chip piracy raids across the country.
These raids have helped build capacities and awareness about the issue of Mobile Chip Piracy. Over the last couple of months there have been some considerable achievements in terms of upgrading the systems of the police & the judiciary.
Its time that the industry understood the losses that they could make because of the menace of the mobile chip piracy.
India has more than 250 million mobile phone users. Assume that only 5% of them have a phone with a chip. Your talking about piracy over a base of 10 -12 million phone users. Assume all these phone users who have a chip download only once in a year at the rate of Rs.100. Yet your talking of a business worth 120 crores. This is much more than the total money currently made by the music industry on all soundtracks & soundtrack derivatives like ring tones, ring back tones and full songs. It is a serious problem.
There are various ways of tackling this problem. One of which is to take anti-piracy action which the IMI team has begun to do.
Firstly, we will ensure that these people who are responsible for mobile chip piracy are convicted. Secondly, as an industry we need to find out if we can come out with some pre - embedded chips which can give the customer his choice of songs on his mobile. This will mean that people won’t have to go to pirated shops to get songs of their choice on their mobile.
For more - View The NDTV Interview Video
Snapshots of the Recent Training Program on MOBILE CHIP PIRACY at The IMI Head Quarters in Mumbai
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