The boat that rocked is a great movie and Philip Seymour Hoffman has acted wonderfully in the same. What got my interest mainly in the movie is how few politicians who were against the concept of Pop and Rock music were able to come up with legislation that made the boat illegal and yet people instead of standing against it, were just feeling sad and disgusted about the government. The movie at starting states how more than half of the population were interested in Pop and Rock Music and how the Pirate Radio helped to cater to their interest. If you go by market rules, it would mean that this was tremendous market and it would mean many companies would be competing for the same market. However it doesnt seem so. The Pirate Radio was the only one in the market to cater to such a large audience and more importantly it was due to some reason an underground activity. Listening to Pop and Rock music seemed to be something bad even though more than half of the population was doing it. Sounds absurd right?
What is more absurd is that all the politicians in the government decide that this should be stopped and they come up with some bad legislation to put an end to the Pirate Radio by making it illegal and announce the date since it will be applied. So what is the most logical thing to do when government comes up with absurd laws which you do not agree with? Stand up against it? In this movie, The Pirate Radio tries to escape from running away because they felt that there was some brilliant and easy way to do it. Not only that, people also keep crying in front of their radio, trying to justify to themselves that Pirate Radio very soon will be gone. Why didnt anybody go to street and fight against it? Well this was in around 1966.
Come to 2014, close to 50 years later. We are told about Mass Surveillance on Internet. We are told government is doing it. We are told there are absurd laws made by government to justify it. And yet people are not coming to streets? Almost everybody uses internet nowadays. Most of your intimate stuff is online, shared with others. Yet nobody seems to care that few politicians are coming up with absurd laws to govern internet and make things illegal just because they cant control it.
Take for example, the state of Karnataka in India. Our Legislators just passed an amendment to an Act which says that if you are a digital offender who causes public disorder, then you are liable for preventive detention under Goonda Act, a draconian act which our constitution allows to ensure public order. This is the definition of “digital offender” as per the amendment. “’Digital Offenders’ means “any person who knowingly or deliberately violates, for commercial purposes, any copyright law in relation to any book, music, film, software, artistic or scientific work and also includes any person who illegally enters through the identity of another user and illegally uses any computer or digital network for pecuniary gain for himself or any other person or commits any of the offences specified under sections 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 and 75 of the Information Technology Act, 2000.””
Right, so if you download a movie from torrent, ebook from internet or a photo from flickr and use it for your commercial purpose, you are the Goonda and hence you can be taken into custody. Not only that, you wont be able to fight a case for 90 days which can be extended upto 1 year. Icing on the cake is that Bangalore, which is the capital city of the state of Karnataka is called the IT Capital of India. With the growth of cheap smartphones in the market, almost everybody has phones which are used to listen to songs. Hearing to a bollywood song while moving in a BMTC bus which is being played loudly by a passenger’s phone is a very common thing. So everybody actually breaks copyright law, it is almost taken for granted and yet nobody seem to find it absurd to bring it under something as draconian as Goonda Act. We at FSMK along with other likeminded organizations like PUCL, ALF are planning some activities to sensitize public around this topic. Hopefuly unlike in the movie, our people will stand up against such absurd laws and force the government to revert it.
