Video piracy is a Rs 1,000-cr menace

Video piracy, which has increasingly resulted in revenue losses for the Indian film industry, became an alarming Rs 1,000crore market in calender year 2008, rising more than 20% from 2007.As per a Northbridge Capital Asia report, the Indian film industry, which is currently pegged at Rs 14, 400 crore, produces around 1,050 films every year but loses 14% of its revenue to videopiracy.
To check this illegal practice, big production houses like YashRaj Films,UTV,Eros International, Shemaroo and Moser Baer joined hands,in December 2008,to invest a ‘significant amount’ to fight video piracy .However, according to Savio Dsouza, general secretary, Indian Music industry (IMI), every year, an investment of Rs 20 crore is required to fight the menace. Meanwhile,analysts say that the sales of illegitimate DVDs rise approximately by up to 2% every year.
Hiren Gada, director, Shemaroo Entertainment said that in FY 08-09, 90% of the videos (volume wise) sold in the market were pirated. The major challenge is to gauge how to bring down the rate of piracy. In terms of legitimate business, in the USA, the domestic theatre business forms 25% of the revenue from films and home media earns 40%.In India, however, the domestic theatre business is 50-60% and home media business garners 5-7%.
“The gap between playing the film at theatres and at home is 4-12 weeks. Since pirated DVDs are cheaper and are easily available, by the time the film is released, thousands of videos are already sold in the market,”he added.
Agreeing to this, Siddarth Roy Kapoor, chief executive officer,UTV Motion Pictures said, “The rate of video piracy is quite substantial since the broadband penetration in India is not so high.We need to think in terms of shortening the windows that lead to piracy. Partnering with DTH players and making movies available on satellite are some ways to improve the rate of investment.” “The law needs to be strict to stop piracy. Taking anti piracy actions, change in pricing and customer awareness are some of the ways that can bring down the piracy rate,” added Dsouza. IMI works in 15 states and conducts over 3,000 raids in a year against piracy.
Production houses, along with former ATS chief AA Khan who will be leading the roadmap, will target shops and conduct raids, and will put the culprits behind bars. The project plan is to create an infrastructure to combat piracy. “First, the approach has to be at the legislative level (government departments coming together), second,at the enforcement level (involvement of police officials and lawyers), and third,at theconsumer level (to educate them),”said Gada.In the past,Shemaroo with the help of its anti-piracy team has been tracking criminals selling pirated movies to reduce the rate of piracy.