India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has called for the domestic entertainment industry to look inward and tackle piracy at its source.

Delivering her inaugural address at the 9th FICCI Frames in Mumbai last week, Ms Asha Swarup, secretary (MIB), said more initiatives to stem leaks on the supply side would prove more effective than monitoring and punishing defaulters.

Swarup said the Indian government did not approve of the recommendations of a draft optical disk policy on combating piracy. The industry suggestions would lead to the creation a regulatory regime of inspection, which did not sit well with the country's push towards liberalisation, she added.

Swarup said the government would "soon come out with a policy on HITS (Headend in the Sky), which would improve digitisation of cable and television networks." She added that the Government was examining recommendations made by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to spread Conditional Access System (CAS) to 55 cities in the next three years.

Kunal Dasgupta, co-chairman, FICCI entertainment committee and CEO of Multiscreen Media (previously Sony Entertainment Television) explained how releasing movies over multiple platforms within a short span of time might work well to fight piracy.

"The movie Jab We Met changed the landscape of home entertainment business and television rights business. The movie was made available on DVD within a week of its theatrical release, and notched 8 million sales in a marketplace where successful movies find it tough to cross the 1 million mark", he said.

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