Banned music sites seek licences
The Indian Music Industry’s (IMI) efforts to curb piracy are slowly bearing fruits, as www.smashits.com bought a licence to stream music from the IMI. This is one of the 104 websites that were blocked after the Kolkata high court passed an order directing 388 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to ban them.
However, www.songs.pk, also one of the websites against whom the order was passed, is now operating under the domain www.songspk.pk. IMI officials said that they will seek an order to shut that website, even as IT experts said it is difficult to control online music piracy.
Vijay Lazarus, president of the IMI said, “We are in talks with several other websites who have approached us for a licence. The fees depends on the quantum of downloads and streams of music. We have also noticed that some websites have started operating using different domains, for which we will be approaching the court soon. Piracy is an impending problem for India’s media and entertainment industry, causing losses of about $4 billion every year.”
However, cyber experts feel it is not a practical appraoch to deal with music piracy. “Americans tried banning websites and failed miserably. Now they have not even banned terror organisation Al Qaeda’s website, as they have realised that banning websites does not work. In fact, the music industry is encouraging piracy here,” said Vijay Mukhi, cyber expert.
“In the West, people buy music online, and they do not have to pay for an entire album. For example, on itunes, you can buy one song for 99 cents. How does one buy music like this here? Instead of banning websites, the music industry should allow web portals to sell music.
Moreover, a person involved in piracy can book several domains. Buying these domains is very cheap and then operate using different ones once a particular domain is banned. How many domains can be banned that way?” Mr Mukhi said.
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