The event was conducted by Sabeen Agha, famous filmmaker and journalist with sixteen years of experience, associated with BBC. She introduced the speakers, Umer Shaikh and Haania Haroon, and the chief guest Taher A. Khan , Chairman of Interflow and a renowned face in media and advertising industry.
Imran Shirvanee briefly helped pull focus to the agenda of the seminar which aimed at an interaction between media and the judicial side for an active discussion on protection of IP in Pakistan. With the rapidly globalizing Pakistan, conflicts are more likely to emerge in the IP sector. For example Geo’s trademark was recently found being owned by other channels in certain regions. Thankfully Pakistani’s were not found violating any laws but with numerous portals on the web and on other media outlets, such situations are likely to arise frequently.
We have been picking ideas from all over the world but through legal channels we can now legally acquire those ideas. The discussion aimed at avoiding such conflicts and to come up with plans whereby media understands what are their limitations and what protections are required for the key organizations to take.The lawyers also need to understand how the media industry functions since the theory may look all sorted but media with its intricacies makes handling of these litigations a different ball game.
According to Umer Sheikh, the broadcasters themselves are unaware of how much of their intellectual property is being infringed upon. He shed some light on the workings of the media by sharing how initially they struggled to pay singers and content producers because it was a nascent industry. A channel starts getting its invested money in the 5 th or the 6 th year.
Initially 12 families of Pakistan had their generations working in the music field. Now hardly 5 of them are still engaged. The rest had their traditions stopped because they found it did not empower them or their art. According to Umer Sheikh, channels are forced to use the oversees content to make their ends meet despite the sad reality that our dramas were once the best there was from the region.
In the early 2003 the advertisement expenditure of our industry was 40 million dollars. Currently it hovers around 370-400 million dollars. Keeping in mind the digitizing of the media content, be it of TVs or radios, being put up on various portals is unfair for the broadcasters because they do not get duly compensated which in turn does not recompense the content producer its labors worth. Umer Sheikh emphasized that we as a society need to adopt an approach whereby we own what we produce otherwise our content it will never become our heritage, it’ll simply be plucked off the air without any justice provided to the producer.
Sabeen also found the problem lying with the lack of knowledge of the rights given to people to protect their intellectual property and its lack of implementation in our country. She raised a good question to Umer sahab when she inquired whether our channels are even producing the quality dramas that had brought them accolades of being the best from the region in the past. There was no competition since there was only PTV but now with the west and our neighbors also contributing to what TV has to offer things have gone increasingly difficult for our content to survive. She also spoke of how our claims to owning a drama industry falls flat before the drama industries of our neighbor and the West since theirs is a registered business and ours is not.
Hania Haroon seconded Umer Sheikh’s discontentment with the industry not being cherished because of lack of awareness among workers of their rights. People here unfortunately do not realize the importance of their work and hence fail to reap the maximum benefits out of their creation. Media is specifically more in tune with trademarks and copyrights aspect of IP. She spoke extensively on competitive advertisement and copyrights. She spoke how in her limited experience with the industry she found brands outsourcing their marketing campaigns to advertising agencies and are unaware of the extent to which they can use their competitors work to sell their own brand. She finds Section 68 of Trademark Ordinance to be essential. A lot of marketing campaigns confuses their brand with that of the competitor and sometimes even compare the two in a slanted manner. Competition Act of 2010 and Competition Commission of Pakistan have played vigilant roles in such deceptive competitive marketing practices. The communication gap between media personnel and lawmakers adds to the problem since the IP laws are generally new in the country. Driving the laws from European principles also is a hurdle since what theoretically seem sound struggles to find shape in our country. Advertisers here do not understand that even if for example they take only the tune of a song as a jingle without prior notice/permission that it is an infringement. She cited the Hub Salt case and other such self-claiming number one brands that are not based on any quantifiable research. She stressed over how organizations need to understand that competitive advertisement may be legal but such unsubstantiated proclamations are not permissible.
Hania also spoke over copyrights protection to content producers, explaining how ideas cannot be protected through copyrights but tangible work however can be secured. It is not mandatory but comes in handy when one claims of infringement. Suing someone in Pakistan however is not rampant since hardly a lot of people are capable of it. Non-Disclosure Agreements that binds the other party that ideas shared are confidential protects the content maker unlike the NDAs designed by organizations that take away their rights of contesting in case of any future infringement of the designers work. Hence in our society it is imperative that people in our industry become vigilant of their rights and find out ways to protect oneself and their intellectual property.
According to Imran Shirvanee regardless of the medium that the matter is produced, Pakistan needs to come up with practices where the content producer is adequately compensated. Our content designers are in no position to line up sittings with lawyers in our country; they do not belong to the affluent class usually. The solution we seek from media houses so far has been to come up with contracts that stipulate all rights of the content to be given off to the organization. Now Copyrights law defends the rights of the content maker in our country but what is practiced is restriction of such empowerment. And nobody questions it because if they force their rights the platform does not remain open to them anywhere.
He spoke of the need of protecting the small and the vulnerable in our industry since our media organizations are no giants in the international forum. Our biggest and the most powerful of all media houses are small before the western media houses. Unless we exercise such care and empower our own content producers we shall remain easily suppressed and exploited in the wider international arenas.
Danish Aziz from Jang Group questioned how our nascent media houses tackle contracts like that of T- Series which popped up three or four years back, claiming a whopping 90 million yearly for their songs. Umer Sheikh answered that such strong arming tactics though discouraging is easily handled with mediations between broadcasters and the content producers. A reasonable rate of deliverance negotiated by broadcasters and content producers is a system still absent in our country. Umer Sheikh remained optimistic of the signs the industry had been showing in the past ten years, Sabeen however added that for a effective change the industry needs to shift its focus from the capitalist race to the quality of its content and the rights of its designers.
Taher A. Khan spoke of how businessmen from abroad find setting up their trade here cumbersome. Apart from the initial hassle of setting up the business, they face problems of tax refund and intellectual property rights. He shared how outsiders have been found repeatedly bemoaning excellently articulated laws here with no implementation of them. He criticized the lack of tribunals to ensure the implementation of these laws and was skeptical even in case of setting up of these tribunals since our track records are not good even with the existence of organizations that ensure speedy justice.
The increasing number of Indian DTH channels is illegal but it is rampant in our country where people are even found paying for it. It has been brought to notice on all fronts but the lack of action on part of the government is dispiriting to say the least. As an industry Pakistan sure has come a long way but there are still a lot of hurdles it has yet to cross to maturity. The oversees content on our channels is also due to the balancing of costs since a quality Pakistani drama’s per episode costs 1-1.5 million per episode. They clearly cannot afford 5 hours of fresh content on their channels. Things surely are improving. Paying royalty oversees has not been a hassle because it was at the end of the day legitimate process. Here people struggle because they clearly have no clue of what they are doing. Hence the collaboration on many fronts with different media associations like PEMRA and IPO to come up with ways that compensates writers, musicians, technicians with their endeavors. An even more clear articulation of laws is also needed. Pepsi in their most recent advertisement campaign used the track from Vital Signs whose copyrights were given to Interflow and hence was eventually dragged in the court by it, Rohail Hyatt and Junaid Jamshed.
Defined framework is crucial to the practices of Intellectual Property and Copyrights. Taher Sahab explained why Bill Gates refused to invest in Pakistan because of slack IPR here. It has to be respected in our country to ensure judicious compensation where it is due and to attract investment for economic expediency.