At a Video Store near you…
The rabid infestation of the cancer known as piracy has completely devalued each and every film, big and small, and ultimately killed the experience of watching a film on DVD. Now every film from Billu Barber to Dhoondte Reh Jaaoge, from Delhi-6 to Jai Veeru (yes I know that film JUST released in theaters this weekend!) is sitting on the counters of the video stores in a poor quality, washed out pirate copy.
The stores here in Vancouver sell (not rent, sell) these crap quality copies of pirated DVD ripoffs 3 for $10.00, so of course 95% of the customers, who view these films as nothing more than time-pass (and yet they buy every freakin one: for that price why not? If its crap just toss it or worse, give it to a friend to they can save that $3.00 and put it towards their next meal deal at McD’s!) clamor to get their three for that week. Some even come a few times a week. This is even worse than the previous trend of stores having monthly memberships where one could rent up to 20 movies a month for only $10.00. We have sunk to an all-time low.
The clients are not to blame: they go with the cheapest most conveniently available option. They don’t give a shit, because for them buying 3 films for $10.00 is better than spending anywhere from $25 to $50 on taking their family out to the theater. Why bother anyways? When the latest Hindi film playing in the cinema receives bad reviews, audiences rush to the video stores because, even if its not worth watching in theaters, they still want to see it. The other issue of course being who the hell’s going to buy original DVDs when they can get a cheap ass disposable copy instead?
Given that the vast majority of their customers have seen the shitty pirated copies, video stores have little to no incentive to purchase the originals of the smaller films or the ones that flopped badly when they do release on DVD. Only the big films are purchased, and that too only a handful of copies. And so the vicious cycle is further perpetuated.
The sad truth, and yes I know we all know this but I still think it needs to be stated, is that none of the revenues from these pirated DVD’s go to the Distributor who paid for the films rights and are getting ripped off, and so the Distributors thus have to purchase these rights at a lower price from the films producers, who, no matter how good or bad their films may be, are still entitled to the royalties earned from their film being released on DVD. The whole damn industry suffers as a direct result.
So how much money is the film industry losing because of piracy? The production houses (big and small scale), the independent producers, the various distributors and the exhibitors world wide, how much are they losing because of this racket? Well, I did a bit of research and found this article , for which there’s also a video post, and was shocked to learn that “Industry estimates say this means more than 400 million dollars in revenue loss for India’s entertainment industry“. Could that be right? $400 Million?? That’s mind-boggling!
So what can be done about this? I may be quite ignorant in this matter, but what’s stopping the major distributors like UTV Motion Pictures or Eros Entertainment, or even the smaller ones like Rainbow films or others like them, from outsourcing a small third party company to go out to these stores and confiscate any pirated DVD’s? (There are over 60 video stores in Vancouver and surrounding cities alone, can you imagine how many pirated discs are out there right now??) Heck, they could get they same guys to distribute the official copies upon release. That way, the video store owners have someone auditing them regularly and ensuring that the stores don’t carry pirated DVD’s while at the same time promoting films when they do come out on DVD.
This is not all that costly of an option; its effective, and above all else it has many obvious benefits. It would kill piracy at the local level, forcing video stores to purchase and rent out only the officially released copies. This in itself would help distributors regain a huge portion of their currently lost revenues. It would better promote films, both on DVD and in cinemas, again leading to regaining lost revenues and also increasing the value of every film. It would eliminate the bulk-buying of films and thus customers would have to pay to rent each film (the way they do at Blockbuster and other mainstream video stores), so they would be more selective and thus again value the better films even more. And of course, audiences would no longer be subjected to poor quality, pixelated, washed out and sometimes even incomplete DVD copies of Indian films. Again, by watching the film on a crisp, clear high quality DVD, it ups the value of each film and especially the good ones.
Why someone hasn’t taken the initiative yet and cleaned up this mess is beyond me. But someone needs to step up and create a system to battle this disease, this infestation, because its eating away our beloved industry and its devaluing our favorite films on a weekly basis.
I don’t know if its gotten this bad everywhere or if its just in my part of the world. Would really, really like to know, so please everyone provide some sort of feedback on this. And of course, suggest ways on how we, in our own cities, can help battle piracy.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you’ve said. I’m also from Vancouver(assuming in BC), and the amount of piracy here is insane. I don’t think there’s really any sort of a quick fix to the problem. Even if what you’ve proposed was carried out, the sale of pirated DVDs would probably just become less open and continue to occur behind the counter. Although I understand piracy hurts the distributors of films, the thing that always used to bother me the most about piracy was the degradation in the quality of the film. I was always concerned that viewers were greatly missing out on the full experience of films when watching pirated versions of them. Recently I’ve realized that there are many people who do not even have an appreciation for technical quality. To these people, it makes close to no difference if the picture or sound quality is degraded. I’ve found that the people who do have an appreciation for quality, tend to spend the extra dollar to purchase original DVDs. Sadly with the exponential increase of piracy in the lower mainland, I fear that people may not even realize that original DVDs are available.
Its just not the pirated DVDs but the online piracy also which is extremely affecting the revenues. And whats worse is that torrents of even the newly released movies are available hardly within a day having good quality so there are many who do not bother to go to cinema halls. even if someone is willing to go to a cinema hall someone from the same group would have dowloaded (now all over we have unlimited download facility with broadband at affordable prices) and seen the movie and would encourage even others to see the downloaded version. I have seen it so many times and this generally happens with the low budget movies. Those a******* will say that the movie was great and all but it doesnt matter to them that they have watched the movie in an illegal/immoral manner and they are deprived of so many more such movies because the producers do not have enough funds to produce such movies as most of the Junta prefer seeing such movies for free. I as a policy do not even watch the movies in pirated form even if I would not watch them otherwise or have already seen it and encourage others around me to atleast see a good movie in cinema hall but am considered crazy for it. They say ‘Tera kya jaa raha hai’. Whats worst is that these people even do not realise that they are commiting a crime equivalent of theft while doing this.
Yup, it’s become common knowledge that this is happening all over.
Yet, the shop keepers are also ‘losing out’ to the God Of Mankind – the internet!!
Certain films are said to be on the net before even the cinematic release!
So, yeah, people don’t want to spend $50 at the cinema, and then there’s those who won’t even spend $10 for 3!
They’ll comfortably sit at home and use the net.
This problem is here to stay.
Film makers might want to save money by not paying stars such astronomical sums!
its a sad fact…..and it would take a huge leap of faith from every single movie downloader or pirate-copy buyer out there to eradicate this completely. as long as there is internet, there will be piracy…..
but there is a phase before it reaches the net-the theater. how do they get the films from in there? certainly not mobile cameras. then the only way are compact camcorders or handycams. an effort from the theater or multiplex authorities to prevent the cams from entering the hall can to an extent prevent it.
only if they have a good cam in the hall with them can they come out with the movie and spread it.
Tony – Its the same thing here in Sydney. Shops have posters outside of movies whose pirated DVD’s they sell inside. All new movies are out within a day. Combinations of 3 new movies, sometimes 4, makes it a lucrative buy for most who just want entertainment. It always surprises me as to how they can sell it openly when they can’t do the same with Hollywood movies. The internet is more of a problem for Hollywood (aXXo) than Bollywood. Yes, ppl download Hindi movies from the internet but even these movies are uploaded by people who got these cheap $2 DVDs.
Sometimes there is no choice for even ppl like me. The movie doesnt hit the local cinemas. Neither will the original be available for 3 months. So I too reluctantly buy one of these copies to quench my anxiety. I know I dont help the cause by being a hypocrite but I also buy the original DVD when it comes out. How many others do that?
What is the source? I have heard many theories behind where these DVD’s originate. Including one where it mentioned that it’s a neighbouring (hostile) country’s government trying to put the brakes on our economy by doing whatever little that they can.
Whatever the case. There definitely has to be some way that this can be stopped? How how how was this successfully done for Dev D? I have never seen a single movie in the last 3-4 years which has been kept away from piracy for as long as Dev D. Ghajini, RNBDJ, etc. were available the next day! But Dev D took a month. If AK/UTV had made a conscious effort to do this, please pass on the trick to others.
And a request to those who buy these pirated DVD’s. Please download instead. When the sales of these DVD’s reduce in the local desi stores, stocks will reduce. The stores would order 50 copies instead of 200 perhaps. The more u download, the less the stock.
Who knows? Could help kill the source if not econimically viable.
TMN — Nice article, this is of particular interest to me since I love watching films and it depresses me the only option I usually have of watching a good Hindi film (like Dev-D or Luck By Chance) is thru a pirated DVD or online feed!!
I think you touch the issue but the solution is not that easy. The issue itself is complex – no Indian store here in the US (barring a few), are authorized to “rent” DVD’s. That would require them to get a video-rental license which in itself is an expensive proposition. So even if a store buys and rents an original DVD, it’s still violating a law since it does not have license to rent.
Secondly, content is not available easily in North America despite all the buzz surrounding a film prior to its release. “Taare Zameen Par” has not had an official release on DVD in the US; yet every Indian even remotely interested in Hindi films has watched the movie! For all the marketing geniuses at UTV and Adlabs and all those places who make good use of the Internet and satellite channels to promote new films – I wonder if they have ever thought what a letdown it is for the diaspora who yearn to watch the film but have no place to go except you-know-where.
I mean Dev-D and LBC had a limited release in New York and LA. I understand its not viable for distributors to release these kind of films more widely but NY and LA are just 2 cities in this vast land !
My solution (and don’t we all have one ?
) is very simple – release content on DVD in North America, Europe and the Middle East to coincide with its theatrical release in India if the film were not to have a wide release. That would mean any film outside the YRK or Dharma banner. Make the smaller films available for CHEAP, immediately! It’s very possible to manufacture, ship and distribute content thru DVD or legal online downloads for just $5 and regain some (if not all) of the $400 revenue that is lost.
If a desi here can spend $2K for a big screen TV then why would he be reluctant to purchase an original $5 DVD that lets him watch the movie in its full glory? If its crap then its only $5 down the drain. That to me is the more practical solution than cracking down on desi stores who sell pirated DVD’s. If you stop them then folks would go online or find some other way to satisy their urge…
the worst part of it all is dat piracy money goes to the underworld n in turn to terrorism…read somewher that Dawood has made this his main business now…
Rasik, why just pirated dvd’s?
Even cheap bootleg booze and cigarrettes encourage crime and fund potential dangerous organisations.
Some even believe that certain cinema’s in India are to be held responsible for providing impressive quality illegal dvds.
Like Jibin pointed out earlier, how are people entering the halls with a video recorder?!!
Savio, very interesting idea actually.
But is anyone listening??
Didn’t Rajshri Productions release ‘VIVAH’ online the same day as the cinematic release??
Now that could be a healthy trend too.
How come no other film followed??
first of all, i download. so i’m no crusader of justice.
let me also say that the movies being churned out nowadays aren’t worthy of buying or watching in theaters at the price being quoted.
however, i speak for myself when i say that i buy the dvd of movies that i deem worth my hard earned money.
as for the situation, yeah, it’s the same here as well. we got individuals instead of shops selling them, on the streets, who then disappear in the dark of the night before the cops catch ‘em.
but my point is also that the stars are earning more than ever before, the industry is spreading its wings and giving big releases to its movies outside india, which means more revenue. also, since its their lethargy to curb piracy in any way that’s affecting them, fuck ‘em.
Free piracy according to me is justified a bit by law as it can be stated as sharing but selling pirated shit ain’t justified least bit
what about intellectual piracy sir?
You talked about a valid point, yeah piracy amounts to a very big part, but what about piracy by filmmakers?
Ghajini grossed 250+ crores, partner 65+ crores and nearly 1 out of every3 hindi film is plagiarized…We need stronger rules and more importantly effective implementation to stop piracy both by audiences and filmmakers.
Smeagol!
Ur comments are damn right!
The phrase, ‘Chor ke ghar chor’ comes to mind!
i will any day prefer downloading movie from torrents….in this times of recession one cant afford 180rs ticket to watch a movie like cc2c
@smeagol
u forgot to name some more movies
for eg zinda…..man-o-man frame to frame copy of korean movie oldboy(dont know whether it was a hit);then mukul anands agneepath the whole idea was uplifted from scarface
even the theme of scarface theme was a copy…
can any body answer my questions