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Nithya Subramanian

New Delhi , July 10

IF you are a Hindi music fan hitting sites such as soulkurry.com, musicindia.8m.com or 123songs.com for downloading songs free, the chances are that you might just be denied access.

For the industry association, Indian Music Industry (IMI), has raised its ante and has over the last 6 months got 250 sites shut down. These were providing free Bollywood hits and other Indi-pop music through file-sharing networks (activity of making files available to other users for download over the Internet and smaller networks).

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Savio D'Souza, Secretary General, IMI, said that its anti-piracy team singles down on popular music songs of member music companies that are available online at various sites and peer-to-peer networks (which allows transfer and sharing of files stored on and served by personal computers of the users).

"These songs are then sourced to their origin by the team. We then rope in our international partners such as IFPI London or RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in the US to help us shut these sites," he added. Most of the servers that facilitate sites offering unauthorised download of popular music are based out of the UK or US.

The IMI is also examining a recent US Supreme Court ruling on online pirates that states that any technology company found encouraging customers to share music and movie content over the Internet through peer-to-peer networks for free, will be faced with contempt of court. It has been stated that peer-to-peer networks have lead to a 25 per cent drop in CD sales over the last few years.

"So far there was no clarity on whether peer-to-peer sharing would result in copyright infringement. We have asked our legal team to examine the issue and will take a decision shortly. Internet service providers could also be roped in our effort," Mr D'Souza said.

Meanwhile, more than one billion songs are exchanged each month around the world, and in India the losses due to Internet piracy are estimated to be anything between Rs 50 crore-100 crore per annum. But efforts to curb piracy seem to be paying off.

Last year, the music industry did not make any cash losses, but it has been losing over Rs 200 crore each year for the last three years. The turnover of the industry has also shrunk from Rs 1,000 crore some years ago to Rs 650 crore.

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