ITV

Tag: statutory

  • Indian Music Industry’s two point recommendation for IPR protection

    Indian Music Industry’s two point recommendation for IPR protection

    MUMBAI: In an attempt to combat music piracy the Indian Music Industry (IMI) has recommended a two-point programme..

    The programme advocates the setting up of an enforcement agency within the police department. This will protect copyrights and levying statutory damages to ensure deterrent punishments to the pirates.

    The IMI has suggested that the national enforcement agency it has suggested should ideally comprise of an anti piracy organisation by the government that will operate at the national level. This force will help expand the reach and powers of IMI’s anti piracy operations conducted across the country and bring about efficiency and speed in law enforcement against piracy.

    IMI has also urged the central government to impose stringent statutory damages as a deterrent punishment for pirates. Leniency in the Indian judicial system and law enforcement is resulting in a dilutiion of efforts undertaken by IMI to dissuade pirates.

    The IMI has given the example of the US where imposition of statutory damages has reduced piracy levels. There a person caught with pirated products is charged with statutory damages of $ 150,000. In India a person caught with pirated products is charged with a maximum fine of Rs. 5000 and/or one year’s imprisonment.

    IMI president Vijay Lazarus added, “IMI welcomes the I&B Ministry’s initiative of seeking monthly reports on piracy-related raids and seizures conducted from the states. We also need to remember here that music and entertainment software should be treated as human creative inputs. It is relevant to point out that 70 per cent of CD and recording equipment costs comprise of the creative inputs of music artistes.”

  • Specifications for Indian STBs elaborated upon at SCaT

    Specifications for Indian STBs elaborated upon at SCaT

    MUMBAI: One of the sessions at the ScaT workshop in Mumbai dealt with Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Specifications for Set Top boxes. Col V C Khare, a member of the BIS Committee for Set Top boxes dealt with the issue.
     

    ” In the context of the CAS amendment Act, a set top box is required to decrypt content from the pay channels while also delivering the FTA content which is to be bypassed through its circuits.” 

    The committee, Khare said, had to set standards for set top boxes. “We faced many challenges. One was that no country has formulated any standard for the set top box. CATV service delivery networks in India are apathetic towards hardware selection, deployment, conformity and service quality. Also, encryption is neither standardised nor uniform. The device had to be user friendly as well as responsive to SMS. We also had to ensure that the standards did not favour a particular manufacturer or technique. Also, the input level threshold had to be determined to decide on output levels to drive the television receiver of the viewer.”

    The requirements for an Indian STB include:

    1. Input signal levels to correspond to accepted levels for TV receivers i.e. 60dBpV for analogue and 47dBuv.

    2. Carrier to noise 44 dB is minimum

    3. Rception by STB to conform to IS 13420 for downstream and IS 14231 for upstream.

    4. Manufacturer/ service provider has to specify CAS

    5. In view of uni-directionality of CATV networks there must be a provision for SMART cards.

    6. There must be total flexibility of any SMS which could communicate encryption logic to decryption circuit of STB

    7. Connectors have to match networks and viewers TV receivers in India.

    8. It must be able to operate in areas suffering from low voltage like Bihar and the North East.

    9. A built in device must exist which can detect a pirated pay TV signal

    He concluded by saying, “Indian standards for set top boxes are neutral, interface specific between cable drop and TV, futuristic since advanced versions would also comply. The standards are also user and manufacturer friendly. For me, the acronym of standards is statutory, tangible, accuracy, non-controversial, discreet, authenticated, recognised, documented and symbolic.”