Farokh Balsara, Head, Media & Entertainment Practice, Ernst & Young India delves briefly, on challenges facing the digital content industry, which are particularly relevant to India. . He says that digital content sale is rarely a direct transaction between the content creator and the customer, and there a risk of the content creator losing control over the content, particularly due to unclear contract terms and definitions. An efficient DRM is also necessary to prevent piracy.
Rajjat Barjatya, MD of Rajshri Media, in a separate article in Financial Express, adds that PC penetration in India is still very low, with a majority of users still accessing from cybercafes; “Online transactions are still to reach the levels projected in attractive PowerPoint presentations”, and piracy remains the bane of the industry.
I think the terms of the contract are critical – if it is a pay-per-download agreement between the content creator and the content retailer, then the onus is on the content creator to track downloads. The painfully slow legal system doesn’t inspire much confidence either. If I remember correctly, BREW is one technology that enables tracking for mobile; is there anything similar online? However, it’s a lot simpler if the content retailer is given access to a library of content for a fixed amount. Online, though, it is possible to content creators to sell directly to customers, unlike mobile where they have no control over the pipeline and are literally at the mercy of the telco.
Balsara recommends: “it becomes an imperative for these companies to review existing controls and improve upon them, to have a methodical review of processes and technical architecture and use appropriate tests to validate the processes and applications.”
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