Pirates of Caribbean gets a taste of piracy

Video piracy has punched holes in the Indian collections of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the latest offering from Hollywood to release in the country.

The film has recorded the biggest ever opening weekend in the Hollywood history, and may still miss out on several viewers as pirated VCDs and DVDs of the movie have made their way to the local black markets.

Thanks to the thriving pirates of Dubai as well as home-grown fraudsters, pirated prints of the film flooded the market on the day of the India release itself.

The bane of the movie - sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - is its delayed release in India last Friday; it opened globally on July 6.

Other recent Hollywood blockbusters released in India - the two Spiderman movies, the Harry Potter series, Superman Returns - had escaped a similar fate as their release in India coincided with their global opening.

Bollywood pegs the losses in revenue due to piracy at Rs 1,700 crore a year. As many as 70 per cent of the market is serviced by piracy while only 30 per cent is serviced by legitimate products.

The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA), consisting of the six big Hollywood studios, loses an estimated Rs 375 crore in revenue to piracy each year in India.

While the cost of a pirated CD may be only Rs 50, pirates operate on a profit margin of nearly 800 per cent since the CDs are copied.