MUMAI: Piracy has been the bane of both broadcasters and streamers for some time now. Yes, both have anti-piracy crews who spend crores of rupees behind sophisticated tools which crawl the world wide web round the clock to track illegal streams and bring down the rogue sites with the help of ISPs.
Even the Indian government has stepped in at times with the department of telecommunications (DoT) directing ISPs to take down the crooks, but more often than not the takedowns relate to what the mandarins fear could be a threat to national security, religious sentiment, is defamatory or points fingers at the powers-that-be wrongly.
Could it learn from what the Italian government is doing to protect broadcasters and streamers and bring down piracy? The authorities there are not using Mafia-like tactics; they are simply putting in place stricter regulation, policing and implementation.
Italy has more than five million or more citizens accessing scoundrel sites costing the pay TV ecosystem (more specifically sports) - Dazn, Sky Italia, Prime Video and Mediaset Infinity - more than €400 million annually.
To get an insight into what’s happening in Italy a little bit of background in sequential order would help. In August 2023, the Italian government passed a strict anti-piracy law which brought in lay viewers into the fold of those who would be penalised with fines going up as high as €5,000. ISPs would be slapped with administrative fines of 20 million lira to 500 million lira, or in today’s currency – €10,00 to €265,000. Those involved in the supply/distribution of infringing IPTV streams would face up to three years in prison and a fine of up to €15,000.
Then on 31 January 2024, Lega Serie A (the governing body of football in Italy) launched an anti-piracy platform Piracy Shield which is operated by the nation’s Communications Regulatory Authority, AgCom. Its purpose was to identify and penalise those who are watching - mind you, those who are WATCHING - pirated content, and even those who are streaming it. Piracy Shield was designed to block illegal streaming within 30 minutes of detection by targeting both IP addresses and domain names.
In March 2024, Italians received reminders that fines were on the way, even for those who download illegal sports streaming apps from legal marketplaces operated by Google, Apple, and Amazon.
Reports are that the measures seem to be working so far. The multi-pronged exercise has succeeded in blocking over 1,000 online domains and more than 500 IP addresses associated with illegal streaming activities since the start of the new football season in Italy. However, no information was available about individuals being penalised for viewing pirated content at the time of writing.
Recently, AgCom announced the extension of Piracy Shield to cover cultural events, music and TV series. Additionally, it signed a memorandum of understanding between the prosecutor's office and Guardia di Finanza (financial police) under which automatic information exchange between the parties will enable subscribers of pirate IPTV services to be automatically fined. Yes – AUTOMATICALLY fined.
Secondly, an amendment to the online copyright enforcement regulation approved by the Italian senate proposes prison sentences of up to a year for individuals who do not report – yes, those who DO NOT REPORT - piracy or related offences. The amendments also target service providers such as VPN and DNS companies. This includes VPN and DNS service providers such as Google and Cloudflare. These providers will face stricter obligations to cooperate with authorities in stopping the distribution of pirated material.
The amendments and changes have been welcomed by the Italian pay TV industry and streamers. The reason: under the new dispensation, authorities will soon have access to names, surnames, IP addresses, and other identifying details of those accessing criminal websites and hence penalties will be automatically imposed.
We will have to wait and see how effective these measures will prove to be and how much they will deter the pirates in Italy.
In the meantime, can the Indian pay TV ecosystem, DoT, and the government take a closer look at the Italian model of curbing piracy? Can the cash-rich Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and industry come together to create an industry wide platform to curb sports broadcast leakages? Especially, since it is the main sports body that has been raking in billions of dollars by licensing the TV rights. Can the penalties for resorting to piracy be made tougher?
A study in 2023 pointed out that Indian broadcasters and streamers are losing close to $3 billion (Rs 25,000 crore) annually on signal leakages related to sports and TV series telecasts through illegal cable TV and internet distribution. Indian anti-piracy laws also only finger and penalise the pirates – and that too infrequently as policing, and implementation is weak. Hence, piracy continues to be to be widespread and almost everyone in the ecosystem takes it lightly.
Harsher measures like making viewers and the likes of Google and Apple culpable through automatic penalties could help alleviate the problem. The authorities will not have to penalise too many violators; just making a loud noise about a few could prove a deterrent to most.
The times, they are a-changing. Can the anti-piracy efforts in India gain in strength and momentum through collaboration between the stakeholders?
