Film piracy-Hero vs. Villain

Piracy has been one of the biggest battles the film industry has been battling for quite some times.Low prices & No prices have made the pirated movies ubiquitously available and famous filmy personalities has shown their concerns over this issue and the heroes of the movies went to the extent of investigating and spying the whereabouts of pirated CD and DVD in the streets of different parts of Tamilnadu.
 

It’s really heroic gesture of these filmy heroes to hunt for movie piracy but if we narrow down our investigation to “where is the starting point” the information we get are shocking and unbelievable.

Film piracy has become an organized crime and the network of the mafia which is behind these piracies is huge and highly connected. And this organized crime is becoming the preferred method for ”Hawala” and other forms of “money laundering” (which is finally used in funding number of terrorist groups).

These mafias are having a deep relation with the major overseas distribution companies of Tamil movies in Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai and UK etc and/ or the Mafia  themselves have a invisible stake with those major distributors abroad and get the film’s foreign rights. 

And these foreign distributors have the access to the movie on the day one itself and they also have the copyright for DVD, Blue Ray etc, so they have their own resources to make DVDs etc.

Once the movie is released as per the scheduled date worldwide, the same day these distributors or their partners release the DVD immediately as everyone knows in any foreign country if a movie is broadcasted for a week to a month is equally good as 100 days in tamilnadu.

These DVD which are manufactured by the distribution tycoons and industry pioneers, along with their logos and merchandising is then smuggled back to tamilnadu and other regional markets.

They also acquire the Online rights as well so it’s imperative for them to sell to any one of their associate/partnered “ online movie portal”  which show cases the Tamil movie online legally and through them it is again re sold to online syndicate & to other illegal online movie sites throughout the globe.

There is another Insider story was told to us, the producer of the movie who, after selling his movie’s theatrical rights, Satellite rights, airbourne rights and other online rights  both locally and internationally, sell to these piracy mafia for a handful amount as it’s a extra income apart from his legal sales of his movie’s rights. The producer don’t care about the companies which bought the theatrical rights, DVD and Satellite rights locally and internationally as he is more worried on his ROI and he doesn’t care about the most sensitive Intellectual property right as well.

So It is their own people, the people from the film fraternity are the real origin of these film piracy and which hero we should expect to fight them out. They are not any easy picking street DvD shop owner or sales person who will sell anything which is saleable in any given market as long as there is a demand.

Even the government should consider these video piracy not just an “intellectual property right” issue but should consider this seriously as a threat to the economy and security of the state and country because of its parallel economy nature!!

The internet giants like Google and yahoo also plays a very vital role in funding online portals by placing their advertisements in these illegal movie streaming sites. They also should be probed and advised.

So the filmy heroes should really know who are their real villains are in the film piracy crime!!!