New plan to curb film piracy

"Union Ministry for Information and Broadcasting is working on an optical disk legislation and they have received model legislations from other countries", Reddy, former Information and Broadcasting Minister, said at a conference titled 'India- the big picture'.

The Conference was organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries, on the occasion of International Film Festival of India, beginning this evening.

Earlier, several filmmakers, participating in the conference, had lamented that piracy and taxation were the hindrances to the growth of the Indian film industry. Bobby Bedi, Chairman of CII's National Entertainment Committee said, "The issue of piracy has caused a dent in country's ethics, morality and security." Reddy said piracy was the worst form of intellectual theft and the union government was seriously looking at it.

"Cinema is a state subject and laws are to be implemented by the state government. We are sensitising the state governments by organised training sessions so that officers know about the problem. There is a need to sensitise them about all the aspects of piracy," Reddy said.

On 'increased taxation', Bedi, also a filmmaker, said, "We need to bring down the taxes on par with (taxation on) any product in the world."

Echoing similar sentiments, Amit Khanna, president, Film and TV Producers' Guild of India, termed the taxes as "punitive".