I was wrong. The ministry of information and broadcasting didn’t stand firm after all. Ambika Soni, the I&B minister, bought peace with the news channel licencees she lampoons in private moments. She intervened for the second time and told the International Cricket Council (ICC) that it couldn’t leave our worthy news channels out in the cold in the finals of the world cup. To save face, ICC has announced that it will pursue legal action against habitual violators of its copyright, something the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) couldn’t care less about, at least in the near term.

Sadly, the battle between Sachin and the 'Sanga' parivar (and the IPL soon after) stands hijacked by software pirates. Advocating their cause, voluble anchors-cum-editors-in-chief of some of our worthy news channels, have gone blue in the face over supporting daylight robbery of the ICC’s signal, calling it a gag of the media, if not the end of our democracy.

There’s no free lunch. While the Arnabs, Barkhas and Rajdeeps and their editorial nominees achieved enviable decibels, leaned perilously on their show tables, fumbled for effect, and achieved the immediate goal on hand, in the process, for the sake of a few rotten apples, the entire NBA stands beholden to the licensor, its chariot of morality sunk a few inches deeper!

Just three years back, some of these star anchors were fellow constitutionalists in the NBA group trying to find the right ethical framework for member channels. Today, they look more like the boy who cried wolf far too many times. How many ordinary viewers really believe or care about their jingoism? Visit any social media platform and you see just how the law of diminishing reverence has set in among educated, non-TRP viewers. It’s strange how NBA is left with no control over the kleptomaniacs who pay its subscription. If can’t take meaningful action, because the moment it does, the channel breaks away from the grouping, knowing fully well that NBA needs to remain united at all costs, otherwise the government will force a regulator.

The result is that  marauders use the "media-khatre–mein-hai," to have a gala time. They dump caution (and NBA’s unilaterally-created lakshmana rekhas). They steal and plunder, knowing that tomorrow is another day, wherein either a) peace will be brokered in the form of pious resolutions about being careful the next time around, or b) cases will be slapped with every possibility that they’ll drag for the next 10 years, or, c) as has been happening nearly every time before/during an important event, you, the more respected type, will seek immunity under "fair dealing."  Of course, it doesn’t help that NBA is spoken for by an irritable and cussed spokesperson, who enjoys banging the phone down and when that isn’t the case, telling non-NBA media that it has no business writing a word beyond an official statement. Perhaps the titular position given to a retired chief justice of India  makes NBA releases the last and final word on "fair dealing" (read software piracy)!

NBA has a set template to use public airwaves to whine about its own "plight." That’s is the surest way to lose whatever mythical influence the news TV media still enjoys. Perhaps Arnab and Barkha were a little young and preoccupied in thetrenches to remember how the voice of the mighty Times of India fell into deaf ears when it started devoting op-eds rambling support of its own chairman in his battle with the enforcement directorate. Surely Rajdeep would know the pitfalls, having been an assistant editor in the paper around that time.

But irrespective of anyone’s sense of history, it surprises me how erudite and sophisticated folks like Arnab, Rajdeep, and Barkha, play into the hands of unscrupulous software pirates within the NBA, ready to be herded in the same flock, united over 'victimisation’ and cancellation of their accreditations by the ICC. Isn’t it obvious that the wolves have used the more credible faces on Indian television to spray around a moral argument, viz., using match footage in news channels is good for ordinary folks like us, and the channels are bleating lambs, victims of ICC, that horrid 800-pound Gorilla, who is a murderer of democracy, determined to gag their hard-working foot soldiers from a fundamental duty to report the final.

Behind the veil of the better-regarded NBA editors, as I’ve argued elsewhere too, the channels crying loudest are past masters in stealing legitimate broadcast rights of those who have paid millions of dollars. Some are office bearers in the NBA, despite unpaid bills for violations of broadcaster’s rights during every important television event in recent memory. They are happy dragging court cases over footage abuse during the Olympics – the rights belonged to sarkari broadcaster Doordarshan, but the babus slept through the brutal hacking and ran to the court only after Sushil Kumar and Vijender Singh had won their bronzes. Similarly, in the Indian Premier League - where, despite compelling evidence before millions of prime-time viewers, SET-Max failed to defend its rights (NBA explained to SET’s Rohit Gupta and then IPL boss Lalit Modi during a midnight parley that news coverage helped expand the market!). In the  Union Budget - Lok Sabha TV, the copyright holder, has been sending invoices, but the channels in question routinely get a royal reprieve from the Finance Minister, year after year. Which FM wants to lose a few million news channel viewers when he’s realing off his annual gyan! . In each such case, the offenders have a wonderful explanation: "Courtesy (bug) lagaya to tha! (We had put the 'Courtesy: DD, SET-Max, LS TV,’ etc, bug on the pictures we showed (stole) - what more!)." And I grew up thinking "courtesy" involved two willing parties!

The business case of raping broadcast rights revolves around "fair  dealing" principles enunciated in Section 39 of our country’s copyright act, 1957,  where the excerpts of a broadcast can be used in the reporting of current events (especially those of national importance) or for bona fide review, teaching or research. Channels  use this privilege to wangle a few minutes of the official broadcaster’s footage as their legitimate right, which is fair, but some of them go several times over the number of minutes/exposures available under settled law (or self-created regulation, as is the case with NBA’s sports guidelines). The modus is useful because it hedges the pirate from any risk if the event turned out to be a damp squib. For example, DD bore the risk of poor viewership during the Olympics, but the marauders got the best of both worlds when Sushil and Vijender reached the semis. Suddenly, "fair dealing" and national interest kicked in. Needless to say, if the two bouts hadn’t had Indians in the fray, DD sponsors would have sunk in the sea of uncertainty.

Footage stolen under "fair dealing" is packaged into paid-for programmes - analyses, headline graphics, crawlees, and, how can we forget, raunchy reality shows featuring the hon’ble Rakhi Sawant and one Veena Malik. The cocktail of free "fair dealing" content and sleaze with dubious newsworthiness attracts many value-seeking advertisers, many of them ambush marketers, only too eager to torpedo the official sponsor and take inventory positions at a fraction of the rates being demanded by the legitimate broadcaster. The assumption here is that the aggrieved TV channel won’t get a court decree for a long, long time and stealing under the moral cover of Section 39, sometimes even cutting into live feeds, is a risk-proof adventure.

The coup de grace is how outright theft on the behalf of rapacious media owners is being sold to honest reporters and readers as a case meriting collective action! As if a law unto itself, NBA has created own guidelines on the number of minutes its 45 members can use in an ODI, the mandatory delay prescribed in the use of live footage, and the number and duration of re-uses. This wonderful self-regulation is in no way harmonized with the ICC’s. For good reason. What’s so great about "fair dealing" anyway? If our news anchors can forget 26/11 victims and pin ourhopes onto how many times Dr MMS nodded in Mohali, if they can go insane over body language of the handler sitting next to the PM, what’s an illegal, ball-by-ball re-broadcast of Sachin versus Malinga! (I hope Murali is outside the stadia with the NBA folks discussing their debatable actions!)