Pirates of the subcontinent

I know that this piece might seem oversimplified to some industry insiders. But I'm putting it across the way I best percieve it. I also know that I would be admitting to have committed a crime in this article but I fully understand my actions. And maybe this article was the catharsis I needed to get the crime out of my system. I also concede that this article isn't backed with figures. That's more due to the fact that the topic under question is something that'll leave all figures redundant. Some people might also find this to be some kind of a conspiracy theory - which it very well might be. Accepted. But there is a faint veneer of reason behind whatever I've surmised. And even though it might all be alleged, its definitely not unfounded. Okay...announcements done, let me get to the point by first admitting to the crime I've mentioned here. I'm guilty of piracy. The motivations to delve into it were many. Now, I won't get into things like a defense or justification but I'll take this as a base for a presumption that there would be many more people who take to piracy for the very same reasons. And maybe other reasons as well - valid or invalid is besides the point. What I'm planning to say here is my perception of why the crime is being committed, my understanding of what the industry is doing to prevent it and maybe some inputs from my side as to what else could be done to curb the menace.

To determine where we stand on this issue, we need to analyse the growth chart of the phenomenon. During my childhood, VHS was a rage. We used to wait for holidays so that we could rent out a VCR/VCP and gorge on movies till we passed out from tiredness. And we used to get two kinds of cassettes those days. One was the legal one, bearing the mark of Shemaroo, Eagle, Bombino etc. The others were copies of the latest releases which had quite a few scenes cut, sometimes important ones too. The first pirated movie I saw was Mr.India. I wanted to watch the movie badly and my parents wouldn't allow me within a mile of the theatre playing it - as it was known to be a sleazehouse till a few weeks ago. So it was down to the video rental who had a copy of Mr.India in the second month of the release of the movie. Not that I knew the difference between a legal and a pirated copy then - and I doubt if even the guy renting them out knew. We used to distinguish them by the quality of the print - Achche print waali cassette (read original) and Kharab print waali cassette (read pirated). The quality differential continued for a good decade and a half after that and the only thing that changed till the early 2000's was the time in which one could lay his hands on a pirated copy of a movie.

The year was 2003 when I bought my first DVD player. I used to stay in Hyderabad then. And I had access to two rental stores that were diametrically different ala chalk and cheese. One was located in the upmarket Rd. # 12 Banjara Hills and the other one closer to home in a lower middle class section of Banjara Hills. The shop on Rd. # 12 stocked a huge collection - English, Hindi & Telugu, which included 90% legal prints and 10% pirated. The smaller shop had a much more modest collection. He owned 3 english movies (Top Gun, Terminator 2 and Hyderabad Blues). Well...HB wasn't entirely an english movie but I grouped it along with the 2 T's just for the sake of it. These 3 movies were legal prints. He had a smattering of old hindi movies (legal prints again). He would have a copy of the latest hindi release by the 3rd day of its release though. And then he had hundreds of telugu movies that again were mostly legal. The large shop was once raided by the cops right after Chiranjeevi's Tagore released and with that, off went all the pirated discs from his shop. And the owner of that shop has never stored any pirated titles in his collection ever since. Not even for his safe "regular customers". The smaller shop though, remained untouched by the cops throughout the 4 years I stayed in Banjara Hills.

In those days, the pirated prints of hindi movies we would get were thrown out into the market by Sadaf, a Pakistani company. They were easily recognisable by the tacky reproduction of the film's artwork on the CD cover and their striking logo. A movie on a pirated CD would cost Rs.50 in those days. And the quality of the movie matched that of the artwork reproduction. They were very clearly camera prints and the both the video and audio quality would be lamentable. Today, things have changed quite a bit. The current wave of multi-movie DVD's started around 2-3 years ago. But they were expensive then. a 5 movie set would cost a hundred rupees then. Today, the cost for the same has come down to a paltry Rs.40. And, the quality of the prints seems to have improved by leaps and bounds. Except for that rare pixellation, which might be the result of so much being crammed into one disc, the DVD's of today offer one a decent quality for watching on a 29" TV. Funny part is, most of these DVD's carry anti-piracy warnings from guess who....the FBI! :) Today, one can also watch movies online. No...I'm not talking about documentaries. I'm talking about the latest movie that is available on youtube within 3-4 days of its release.

In my opinion, this shift in pricing and quality is not entirely an economic change. Till a few years ago, piracy had a purely economical motive behind it. People were involved in the business due to the common viewer's disillusionment with cinema halls. They knew that they had a market that was ready to lap up even substandard fare purely because they got the comfort of watching it at home at a cheap price with it. Economically, if one pirated one movie, he stood to gain an operating profit of around 30-40%. The next level (the top level distributor) would append another 20% and by the time it came to the store, an end user would pay a price around 150-200% more than the cost of manufacture - leaving everyone in the food chain with a good profit. Today, we are talking about the same profit margins per disc but that's spread out over 5 movies that are being pirated in one disc. So theoretically, the entities involved from the time a copy of the movie is obtained for the purpose of piracy till the retailer selling the discs would make close to 1/4 of what they'd have made with the earlier revenue model. Now, when money is not the motivation behind such exercises, what could be?

If we trace the history of video piracy in India, one thing stands out as obvious. The 3 main centres from where the pirated movies are circulated are Pakistan, the gulf & Malaysia. And here comes the conspiracy theory bit. I don't believe I'd be way off the mark if I could relate these nerve centres to the globally growing Islamic movement. A major item on the agenda of islamic extremism in the places mentioned, especially Pakistan & the gulf is the economic destabilisation of India. And one person buying a DVD worth Rs.40 means a loss of Rs.500 (on a conservative average) to the industry. And what better way to destabilise an industry than by offering a slightly watered down version of the goods at more than a 90% discount? Going by the plethora of sales points for such media, I shudder at the number of people who might be buying those Rs.40 DVD's. In Panjim, where I currently stay, I've personally seen atleast 20 such shops/stalls. There were 7 such stalls on the stretch ranging from Chembur Station till the vegetable market under the flyover when I checked the same last year. Walk out of any suburban railway station in Mumbai and you'll see at least 2 stalls, with stations like Andheri having at least 20. You have the stats for a small town and a big city. And I won't be wrong if one such shop/stall sells at least 10 DVD's of the latest movie everyday on an average. Do the rest of the maths yourself.

What are we doing, as a state, to combat the spectre of piracy? Agreed - we have established strong laws. But is that going to be enough? The mere presence of laws is never a deterrent. Their tough execution though, is. But tough execution of laws in India is saved only for the barbaric TADA & its likes. Piracy laws? Aah!! who cares? In the third paragraph of this article, I mentioned the divide between the kind of video rental stores we have in India. The reason I mentioned it in such detail was to highlight how selectively the law is being exercised. A big shop on the main road, gets raided with the newspapers carrying the news the very next day. The hundreds of smaller shops across town however, function the same way today as they functioned 5 years earlier. Because the police doesn't have enough manpower to go after them. Even the first shop owner might have paid a fine, a bribe or both and he simply got away. Good that he stopped stocking pirated movies but I also know of many more rental shops that stand unfazed by any number of raids that might've been conducted on them. Also glaring is the number of stalls selling pirated movies out there in the open. I wonder why they are completely ignored by the law enforcement agencies. Leaving the law enforcement agencies aside, it's surprising why there aren't any proactive steps from the industry itself. All I see from that avenue is media campaigns against piracy, which according to me is the bare minimum and not all.

Which brings us to our most important question. What else can be done in addition to what's already being done in order to fight piracy? What steps can the industry take to the effect? What can you, me and all of us do to improve the situation? Let's first talk from a regulatory standpoint. We surely need to have a dedicated anti-piracy team which should ideally be formed under the I & B ministry. This shouldn't be a task force of bureaucrats, but a crack team of slueths. Their sole mandate should be nipping the piracy bug in its bud (well...whatever state it is in now if not the bud). They should also be given enough powers and less bureaucratic hassles to deal with. Maharashtra has taken a good first step by clubbing its gunda act with the anti-piracy act. This will ensure that people found guilty will be facing something much more severe than merely a fine. Of course, this would have effective enforcement of the law as a prerequisite. That itself could be a good starting point for the government. As for you, me and all of us commoners, all we can do is to try and spread the message among our social circle (friends, relatives & the lot).

The industry is what needs to tighten up its socks bigtime. It's easy to play a blaming game by pointing the finger at the authorities' inability to curb piracy. But in spite of that, the bottomline remains that the blame is not going to set the record straight. Piracy will continue and the pirate will simply laugh away to glory at the blame game. For one, the industry can try making copy proof discs. Agreed, some hack out there will know how to get around it. But a majority of the junta around would be rendered helpless. It's obvious from the improvement in the quality of pirated movies over the years that there has to be some insider involvement. So the industry will do a whole lot of good to itself if they were to indulge in some vetting exercises for all those who have access to the different versions of the movies. It would also be very helpful to them if they were to divert some of the funds being used in anti-piracy campaigns to rewards for people provinding tips and leads. Come to think of it. If there are tangible or intangible reasons for me not being able to watch a movie on the big screen, and a solution is commonly available for as cheap as Rs.40, why would I listen to an SRK or an Aamir when they ask me not to promote piracy? Yeah...but I might be quite tempted to divulge a source of pirated DVD's if I get a reward of Rs.50,000.

I've been ranting quite a bit. Guess I'll end here. But I'll end with a promise. However strong a reason I might have for not being able to watch a movie on the big screen, I will not buy another pirated DVD. I'd rather wait for the official DVD release. And I sincerely request all of you to do the same. Hopefully, if we can fight this menace effectively, we might see cheap legal DVD's soon. Moser Baer has already done it. And over the last year or so, they've released quite a few movies in inexpensive titles within a few months of their release. I just hope Moser Baer does for movies what T-Series did for music.

(Originally published here)