Kolkata, Sep 27 (IANS): To curb the menace of piracy in the music and film industry, the West Bengal cabinet Friday decided to promulgate an anti-piracy ordinance that seeks to punish those indulging in illegal copying of original audio and video content, a minister said Friday.

"For quite sometime, musicians and the film fraternity had been requesting the chief minister Mamata Banerjee to do something about the piracy issue ... everybody from the distributor to the artists were suffering because of this. The cabinet at a meeting today (Friday) decided to promulgate an ordinance into this," said state Industry Minister Partha Chatterjee.

"The perpetrators will be appropriately punished under this ordinance," he added.

Earlier this year, hundreds of musicians, technicians and artists from the state participated in a protest against piracy, digitisation and indiscriminate internet music download in the wake of closure of the country's premier music store franchisee Music World - a landmark junction in the hep and stylish Park Street.