Draft e-commerce policy wants body to find pirates, cut their revenue

Bengaluru: In its bid to check online distribution of pirated content, the draft ecommerce policy has proposed to set up a body of industry stakeholders to identify websites that host infringing matter and curtail their advertising and subscription revenue. Online distribution of pirated content is a cause for serious concern, the government said in the draft policy. A Ficci and EY study in March 2018 estimated that the film industry alone loses $2.8 billion in revenue to online piracy.

The draft said such “rogue” websites will be included in the Infringing Websites List (IWL) after verification. ET had on February 6 reported that the Indian film and music industry was teaming up with advertisers to form a voluntary code aimed at reducing ad-supported illegal content. The Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM), a unit of the commerce ministry’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), is spearheading the effort.

The draft policy said that internet service providers should remove or disable access to websites included in IWL within set timelines, payment gateways should not permit flow of money to or from those sites, search engines should remove those sites from their search results, and advertisers or agencies should not host any advertisements on them.

It added that intermediaries need to identify “trusted entities”, whose complaints are resolved on priority. The identification of trusted entity and antipiracy measures shall be done on a voluntary basis, it said.

If the owner of a copyrightprotected work accuses any website or ecommerce platform of making available such work, then the site or the platform should remove or disable access to such content, the draft said.