Video piracy boom keeps Rajkot buzzing

Ask for Shekhar Kapoor's Bandit Queen or 'banned' Black Friday of Anurag Kashyap "�they are all being sold right on the streets like vegetables at the hub of audio-video piracy "� Rajkot.

From the streets of city, pirated compact disc duplicated in Rajkot have found their way to all over the Aszian region.

Rajkot is famous for its precision in engineering products and diesel engines - now it has has one more feather in its cap in the form of pirated audio and video products.

Rajkot appears suitable for audio-video piracy because it offers cheap skilled labour required for duplication of such stuff, explains Shivaji Dangar, a video library owner.

A large number of people have requisite computing skills required as the mushrooming of information technology schools and courses across the region had produced trained manpower without creating matching employment or business opportunities, adds Dangar.

However, shift of customers from video cassette recorders (VCRs) or video cassette players (VCPs) to video compact disc (VCD) players and digital video disc (DVD) players has also provided a major thrust for creating content.

Genuine VCDs and DVDs are expensive and the pirated products and cheap Chinese VCD and DVD players have generated their own market, feeding on huge demand for audio-video content in that format, explains Dangar.

"Business turnover in this particular market per month in Rajkot itself falls is approximately Rs 15 crore," says Jayesh Patel, once a major player in this business.

There are approximately 100 units in duplicating audio-video compact discs with an average production capacity of 1,70,000 sets or 3,40,000 compact discs.

They use writers at their premises connected to a computer. The master compact disc is plugged into a CD player and then seven compact discs are duplicated simultaneously, says Patel. According to Patel, "Each finished product including compact disc, box and wrapper costs just over Rs 6 and they sell it for nothing less than Rs 15 per compact disc."

The master print of the movie and audio in MP3 or any other format is secured from the production team of a movie or music album and handed over to a content firm based at Dubai, called SADAF.

From there, the master print reaches concerned operators via various middlemen and is finally duplicated and sold across video libraries, by hawkers on streets, through pan shops, or STD/PCO outlets" says Nilesh Kotecha, once kingpin at a local level in this business.

Earlier, the duplicators used to book orders over phone from cities across the country and deliver through couriers, adds Nilesh.

"Movie producers have realised that no one can stop the piracy of such material and so master prints get to foreign content firms for handsome sums of money with the request that they should not be duplicated till two or three weeks after the project is released across theatres.

Pirated products also generate additional publicity at various counters across the country free of cost, points out Kotecha.

In other words, the duplicators told Business Standard that many film producers themselves were promoting piracy. "I was shocked when I saw the DVD of Star Wars III with counter of numbers being displayed on while watching the movie, but later on I came to know that this stuff was swiped right from the edit-suite," claimed Jay Vasavada.

The piracy activity is so widespread across the region that people feel the law no longer tackle this.

"How can you stop it?", questions a source.

Companies like Rajshree Productions, Shivsena Chitrapat Shakaha, Megastar, T-Series and Future Films India have tried to stop the piracy through Indian Motion Pictures Association (IMPA) field officers.

The field officers draw their authority from the companies to detect duplication activities and stop it on behalf of the company with the help of the state police by conducting raids.

Once the police raid a place, the duplicator work out a payment system which ranges from Rs1,500 to Rs15,000 per month to avoid raids - that way the duplication business keep on going safely at that particular outlet, alleges Dangar.

Demand for such products comes from both domestic buyers and international ones.

"Operators in Rajkot directly receive orders of exporting such stuff to major countries and in one such raid we had seized export consignment from a courier called Orient Express," explains Pravinsinh Jhala, sub-inspector in the detection crime branch (DCB) of Rajkot Police.

The material was being shipped on New Year's Eve and included pornographic material, adds Jhala.

The police have conducted seven raids in the last financial year and seized pirated products worth approximately Rs12 lakh," DCB sub-inspector Rajendrasinh Gohil said.

The businesses are backed by people who are well-connected politically and there is pressure to scale back raids, he alleged.

The laws have many limitations, Gohil complained.

Police have to act in such cases based on the complaint under the Copyright Act of 1957 but the crime is bailable with provision for only three years of imprisonment only.

In cases where pornographic material is seized, Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code is invoked but such content is now so easily available in every format including mobile phones, a sophisticated team is needed to deal with such crimes, added Gohil.