Video Piracy in India
I was watching music channel on TV and I saw trailer of Hollywood movie Wanted. I was amazed by its stunts and action and planned to watch the movie when it will be released. After 2 days I went to my friend’s place. We were having a normal chit-chat and we discussed about movies where she revealed she recently got movie Wanted a week back and I said “what the fish” & was shocked. To my amusement it was the same movie whose trailer I saw few days back on my TV.
Movie Piracy
This issue has been discussed several times on these pages in terms of piracy statistics, revenue losses, losses to production houses, etc… But still there is no solution to it. The common example of movie piracy can be found in your locality and local TV channels. What to say about piracy network, within 3 days of a Bollywood movie release I can have access to its ‘Theatre print’. Within a week I can watch the same movie on my local TV channel. No doubt the quality of the movie has never been appreciable but still one can watch the movie with almost no cost to individual but a heavy loss to the movie producers.
The biggest fact is you don’t have to work or search hard for such CDs you can get it from your nearby movie rental stores or on ‘laree wala’ with buy back guarantee.
Market
Part I
When you go to purchase pirated CDs and demand for one you will be amused to find the options which they give you. They would ask “Sadi chahiye ya Malaysian print”. The differentiation is based on the quality of a movie. When you have a normal ‘Theater print’ of a movie you would not experience good sound or video quality. The CDs considered as Malaysian prints are edited in such a way that has both good sound and video quality compared to normal print. These CDs are particularly made in Malaysia which has a high demand in Bollywood pirated movies. So this is not a market at local level only. There are other countries which plays important role in this business including...