--- layout: default title: "Piracy Is Now a Mainstream Political Phenomenon" description: "A The Hindu report on a talk by Sunil Abraham at the Resource Mela and Meet of Documentary Centres in Bengaluru, where he argued that piracy of intellectual property has become a mainstream political phenomenon." categories: [Media mentions] date: 2010-11-22 source: "The Hindu" permalink: /media/piracy-mainstream-political-phenomenon-the-hindu/ created: 2026-04-02 --- **Piracy Is Now a Mainstream Political Phenomenon** is a *The Hindu* report published on 22 November 2010. The article covers a talk by [Sunil Abraham](/sunil/), then executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, at the Resource Mela and Meet of Documentary Centres held at the Centre for Education and Documentation (CED) in Bengaluru. He argued that intellectual property piracy has become a mainstream political phenomenon and outlined four possible positions that documentation centres can take towards copyright law. ## Contents 1. [Article Details](#article-details) 2. [Full Text](#full-text) 3. [Context and Background](#context-and-background) ## Article Details
📰 Published in:
The Hindu
📅 Date:
22 November 2010
📄 Type:
News Report
📰 Newspaper Link:
Not available
## Full Text

"Piracy has become a mainstream political phenomenon," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society in the city. The piracy that he was referring to was not the piracy of the high seas but the piracy of intellectual property.

Mr. Abraham was speaking at the 'Resource mela and meet of documentary centres' at the Centre for Education and Documentation (CED). The three-day mela ended on Sunday.

He argued that the process of documentation was a political matter. The theme of his talk was on the tussle between knowledge in the public domain versus its restriction by copyright. Mr. Abraham explained that documentation centres can have four positions vis-à-vis intellectual property restrictions.

The first position could be to agree with the existing law on intellectual property and defend the interests of those who own those rights.

A second position could be to acknowledge the usefulness of copyright laws while balancing it with the interests of the creator, entrepreneur, consumer and the general public. This balancing act is being further pushed by three important global campaigns — the right of persons with disabilities to read, the right of student communities to bypass certain copyright restrictions, and the necessities of archivists and librarians.

Moving to the other side of the spectrum, a third position that documentation centres can have is a 'position of openness' by supporting only freely licensed intellectual property material. The extreme position that can be taken is to dismiss all the laws that exist around intellectual property and freely "pirate" knowledge.

'No longer shameful'

Arguing from this position, Mr. Abraham said that it was no longer shameful to be known as a "pirate" today. "There are elected members of parties advocating piracy in certain European countries such as Sweden and even in the European Union."

Mr. Abraham openly advised documentation centres not to greatly concern themselves with copyright issues in their work, as in India no two lawyers would agree on copyright laws while very few cases of copyright infringement actually came up in Indian courts.

He concluded his talk by indicating that there was no global model that could be applied to intellectual property rights "as there is no model that works for everyone everywhere".

The resource mela was intended to be a multi-dimensional sharing centred around a national network of documentation centres called DCM. The programme was organised by Akshara, Aalochana and CED.

{% include back-to-top.html %} ## Context and Background The talk was delivered at the close of a three-day Resource Mela organised by Akshara, Aalochana, and the Centre for Education and Documentation in Bengaluru, a gathering focused on documentation centres and their relationship to knowledge access. Abraham's remarks placed the work of such centres within a broader global debate about intellectual property that was intensifying in 2010. His reference to elected Pirate Party members in Europe reflects contemporaneous developments where political movements centred on copyright reform had begun gaining electoral representation. Sunil Abraham's four-position framework, running from full compliance with copyright law through to outright rejection of it, was a way of helping documentation practitioners understand where their own practice sat and what political and legal risks it carried in the Indian context. His practical advice, that Indian copyright law was sufficiently unsettled that documentation centres need not be overly cautious, reflected CIS's broader access-to-knowledge work at the time. {% include back-to-top.html %}