Piracy

It has become a common sight that during the release of every movie, Producers will hold a press conference and say that we have set up an anti-piracy cell, and ready to catch the pirates etc. But Piracy is the way that still 75% of people watch latest telugu movies these days.

In our Telugu Film Industry, we see 2 types of Piracy:
1. CD/DVD Piracy
2. Online (Internet) piracy

Online Piracy can still be divided into 3 more types:
1) Internet Download Links
2) Direct Watch Online
3) Torrents

Police can raid a shop and book those involved in CD/DVD Piracy. But why is theOnline piracy so difficult to stop? Let us analyse each case separately.

Internet Download Links:
These are the download links that are posted on some blogs and forums. But these files are not directly hosted on these blogs/sites/forums. The video is first uploaded into file hosting websites like www.rapidshare.com , www.megaupload.com , www.depositfiles.com . These sites allow any files to be uploaded by any user.

The Blog owners escape by saying that they have not uploaded these files and they are not even hosting(storing) these files. They claim that they just found the rapidshare/megaupload links and they posted them on the website. And when we question megaupload/rapidshare, they claim that these files were uploaded by some one and they are not responsible for the copyright issues. And they offer to remove these files in 2-3 working days on taking the complaint. By that time the damage is already done. Even if our producers contact megaupload/rapidshare and get the files removed, the uploaders upload again and put the new links on the blogs/sites/forums.

Direct Watch Online:
This is another prominent form of piracy. With the increasing home internet speeds, watching streaming video online without any buffering delays has made this method of watching movies online possible. While using download links, the user has to wait 2-3 hours till the movie is downloaded. But when you watch online, they can start watching the movie right away without any delay.

Some of the prominent sites are www.bharatmovies.com and www.telugumint.com , www.telugunagar.com . Any one can watch movies instantly from these websites. Whenever a movie is released, these websites put the online watching links on their sites within 24 hours of release.

When these websites are questioned, they claim that they are also not storing the files and they are only sharing the links of www.megavideo.com , www.youtube.com , www.veoh.com etc. These are also foreign websites like rapidshare/megaupload that allow any one to upload files on their hosting. And our online-watching websites even provide alternate links from each of the hosting sites (Megavideo, Veoh etc). This makes it more difficult to our producers and anti-piracy cells as they have to contact each of the hosts separately to bring the links down and loss is already incurred during this period.

Torrents:
Some of the prominet sites in this section are http://www.tollytorrents.com/forums/ and http://www.tollytorrents.com/forums/ .

In the Torrent method, guess who is hosting(storing) the piracy video files? It is the user/viewer. In the Torrent method, the file is stored on the users' systems ans it is made available for download to other users. The above mentioned websites only felicitate in the transfer of files between the users systems by hosting a script called 'Torrent Tracker'.

When questioned, these websites claim that they are unaware of the copyright infringement and an unknown user created the torrent and posted the torrent on their forum.

How can producers stop the online piracy:
1) Check if the website is hosted with an American Host. If yes, they can send a DMCA notification to the website's webhost. The webhost send a notice to the website admin and see that the content is removed. Else the host can suspend the website's account.

2) If the producers can track the local physical address of the website admins in Andhra, they can lodge a direct police complaint on them.

3) Sending a mail to youtube/megavideo/megaupload/rapidhshare mentioning the download links and also appropriate proof that you hold the copyright for the movie also helps. They respond most of the times and remove the links in 2-3 working days.

The above methods can stop online piracy only to a certain extent. It will not stop unless there is no one willing to watch a pirated movie online.But why does a Telugu movie fan want to watch online piracy?

Because
1) Telugu audience are die hard fans of movies and want to see each movie as soon as possible after the release. He can either go to a multiplex bearing a ticket of Rs 150 or a normal talkies bearing a ticket of Rs 50.

But he has to spend long times in queues to get the ticket in a talkies as there is no online booking. If he opts for a multiplex, he has to bear the triple ticket price!
Solution: Bring down the ticket price in Multiplexes to at least Rs 100 and make online ticket booking available in all talkies.Government can help in this by providing some subsidies to all talkie-theaters that have a transparent online ticket booking system.

2) The price of food items in theatres! In this case, both multiplexes and theatres are culprits. A bottle of coke that costs Rs 10 outside costs Rs 22 inside a talkies and Rs 50 in a multiplex. A scoop of ice cream costs Rs 120 in GVK-Inox! And these multiplexes don't allow the audience to bring any food from outside.

Though the Telugu movie fan is ready to encourage producers by paying Rs 50 or 150 for the ticket, he is not ready to promote the money makers selling a scoop of ice cream for Rs 150.
Solution: Reduce the price of food items in both talkies and multiplexes. A Rs 10 bottle of coke should cost only Rs 12 in a talkies and only Rs 15 in a multiplex. Not Rs 22 and Rs 50!

3) Make genuine movies. Our directors take stories and make exact copies of English and othet foreign movies. They are stealing the hard work of others with out taking any permission or copyright from the actual writer. So the Telugu fan feels that there is nothing wrong is stealing from a thief (our director/producer of copied movie). Ex: JD