Thaindian News

New Delhi, Nov 20 (IANS) The entertainment world, social media and electronics manufacturers coming together on the same page and using technology can help curb piracy of intellectual property (IP) piracy, says an Ernst and Young (E&Y;) study.

The report was released at the Forum d’Avignon-2011 event in southeastern France that provided opportunities for discussions on the worlds of culture, creativity and media Nov 17-19. This year, about 400 attendees from all continents shared their vision of this personal and collective investment in culture.

“The onus for enforcement of IP laws needs to be on all the members of the media supply chain including owners, aggregations, distributors and electronics manufacturers,” said the report which studied the laws and IP enforcement in 16 countries, including India.

According to the report, content distributors and aggregations like Facebook and Google have shown greater interest in protecting and selling of legally produced music and videos as it increases their revenues while maintaining brand image.

“This convergence means that distributors and aggregations have greater interest in protecting professionally produced content,” the report said.

“They want to profit as they sell legal music and videos to their customers and they recognise that their own growth depends on delivering secure content,” it said.

The report suggests that even telecommunication companies can look at providing greater mobile broadband access to legally-produced content so as to curb ever-growing downloads and streaming demand.

“Telecommunications companies may have an equally strong in prioritisation certain types of content to limit the significant broadband investments required to accommodate ever-growing downloads and video streaming,” it said.

For internet-enabled equipment manufacturing companies, the report said value additives like software which recognise legally-produced content would not only increase the devices’ value but also protect IP content.

“Tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices present significant opportunities not only to boost revenues but to protect IP using technology enabled into the devices,” said the report.

On the protection front, it emphasised the usage of digital tools like cloud computing, fingerprinting and watermarking of the IP products.

“By focusing on partnerships, agreements and the use of technology to ensure that rights are protected and monetization opportunities exploited, all players in this new digital marketplace can benefit,” the report added.

The Forum d’Avignon was created after the ratification of the UNESCO convention on cultural diversity, and since its beginning, has been backed by the French ministry of culture and communication.