Piracy plagues T-Town

Believe this: The Telugu film industry (the second biggest film industry in India after Bollywood) incurs a loss of over Rs 450 crore every year due to piracy. But it took two filmmakers��������� (Y Ravichandran and director Surender Reddy) fast unto death move, to stir the local film frat and seems to have become a wake up call of sorts since.
However, the proposed one day shutdown of the Telugu film industry was called off after the state information and cinematography minister J Geeta Reddy gave an assurance to film industry representatives Allu Aravind, M Muralimohan, D Suresh Babu, Sekhar Kammula, Teja and M Shyam Prasad Reddythat in one and a half months, an ordinance would be introduced against the video piracy.She has even said that all video libraries would be ���������regulated and not be allowed to function without licence��������� in the next three months. She has assured film bigwigs that the provisions adopted by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to hand out maximum punishment to those engaged in piracy would be examined in the state.
���������I have talked about the menace (or piracy) in the Assembly. We need to introduce stringent laws, since lakhs of pirated CDs are in circulation barely days after a film���������s release,��������� says Praja Rajyam Party Chief Chiranjeevi. His colleagues Nagarjuna, NTR Jr, Allu Arjun and Bhumika Chawla have also made similar demands to revise the anti-piracy laws.
���������A family may think that watching a pirated CD for Rs 25 is not a serious offence, but they are inadvertently affecting the livelihood of numerous families depending who work in the film industry,��������� rues actor Allu Arjun.
An estimated Rs 30 crore has already been lost in the 1st quarter of 2010 due to rampant piracy on internet and CDs. If it continues unchecked, the revenue losses will surely surpass the figures of 2009.
Big-ticket films are uploaded on numerous websites and are available for free downloading and viewing, across the world the day after the film���������s release, affecting both indigenous and overseas collections. And if you thought overseas prints were more vulnerable to piracy, then think again. Says Rajumar, a leading overseas distributor: ���������Even local prints are vulnerable. We suffer huge financial loses since non-resident Telugus fail to turn up in movie theatres if they get a downloaded version of the film. There are softwares that can download an entire movie in 4 minutes flat.��������� In fact, Kuwait, Dubai and Malaysia are considered to be the breeding hubs for pirate syndicates. ���������Pirated CDs are made in these countries and sold worldwide,��������� he adds.
Vijayendra Reddy, exhibitor and president of Telangana Film Chamber of Commerce, says, ���������Besides theatres, I think every point of film production is susceptible. A dishonest unit member can record the entire film in a pen drive and assistants in edit suites and laboratories can also be bribed. During a police raid we caught 5,000 video parlour owners red-handed with pirated CDs. But only 20 of them were sentenced with meagre punishment, while the other cases were struck down as all the witnesses turned hostile. We want the government to book the culprits under Goonda Act and remand them for 14 days,��������� says Reddy.
Interestingly, Telugu filmmakers had started an Anti Piracy Cell seven years ago and tried to sensitise producers about the measures ���������suggesting watermarks on prints, informing cops of respective zones and alerting exhibitors to keep a watch on their staff ��������� that needed to be taken before releasing a film. ���������Water marks on prints can expose the culprit, but the pirated CD would be out by then. So, we need to adopt a two-pronged strategy of curbing loopholes within our infrastructure and urge the government to enforce severe laws. We have observed that theatres in Karnataka are vulnerable as DVDs of new Telugu films get released very fast in that region, so we should expand our purview of action,��������� says producer Devineni Prasad, who has three big-ticket films up for release.
Apart from the Goonda Act, the Tamil Nadu Government has established a separate police team comprising 100 officers under the Anti-Piracy Cell, led by a CID IG. ���������We should have an enforcement cell
to constantly monitor the pirates. We need to amend our copyright law and make the audience aware that watching a pirated film is a crime,��������� says filmmaker Vijayabhaskar.