 "Sameer Nair")
Dishoom, released last week, is the first Indian film to submit an encrypted copy for its certification. Over the last five years, the Motion Picture Distributors Association of India has trained over 7,000 theatre managers to look out for people making illegal copies of a film.
Last month, the Telangana government, the local film industry and internet service providers came together to form an intellectual property crime unit. Inspired by a successful experiment in the UK, this unit will monitor online piracy, recommend blocking of websites and try to choke the revenue source of pirates.
The biggest one globally, Kickass Torrents, was shut down last month with the arrest of its owner by the US law enforcement officials. It may not mean much. Muso, a London-based technology firm’s annual study shows that. “Streaming piracy is king. Torrent use is highly reduced and piracy on mobile devices is slower than expected,” says Christopher Elkins, chief commercial officer, Muso.
Under attack
The studio stands to lose Rs 30-35 crore on the film that cost Rs 42 crore and 15 months to make. The government stands to lose a huge amount — it gets roughly one-third of gross collections as taxes.
A two-minute shot of Kabali, which released on the same day as Great Grand Masti, was available online in spite of an injunction preventing internet service providers from showing a pirated copy of the film.
These episodes have shaken studios across the country. “We felt threatened by what happened to Udta Punjab (which was pirated two days before release) and Great Grand Masti,” says Nandu Ahuja, senior vice-president, Eros International, the distributor of Dishoom. But “the Central Board of Film Certification and its chairman agreed immediately to using an encrypted file for both the first submission and the censored version, (both of which are usually made on DVDs),” says Ahuja.
Countering piracy
As Dishoom plays past a great opening weekend, the Rs 13,800-crore Indian film industry will be watching it — with hope. Encrypting the film before certification or training theatre staff to spot pirates is just one among a series of security measures aimed at “cleaning up the food chain from shooting to post production and release,” says Nair.
Viacom18 Motion Pictures has hired an agency, Aiplex Software, “that does take-downs (of content from pirate sites) for us,” says Ajit Andhare, COO, Viacom18 Motion Pictures. Aiplex uses a number of tactics, says founder and managing director Girish Kumar. These include John Doe orders, consumer education, partnering with hosting sites which then take down pirated content.
The second thing that Andhare thinks would work is limiting the release of a film to DCI-compliant screens only. DCI is a standard that Hollywood demands of digital screens and roughly half of India’s 10,000 screens have it. The others using cheaper projection equipment are called e-cinemas and are rarely used by Hollywood. Hindi films seeking a wide release go all over. “E-Cinema is the source material for piracy because you can copy off the server. So it is giving the film to pirates on a platter,” says Andhare.
But a limited release in an already screen-starved market means a choke on revenues. India has just about 10,000 screens against, say 23,000, in China. Studio heads agree. In markets across the world, it is clear that more screens means less piracy and more revenues. The rate of screen shutdown in India is far higher than additions largely because of regulation. Uday Singh, managing director, Motion Picture Distributors Association, says it is talking to state governments to repeal British era laws so that the construction of screens, which requires 70 licences currently, is hastened. But in India this takes time.
And that brings us to the third dimension, regulation. Almost all studio heads are full of praise for the government and police whenever they complaint. But “when you wanted to block porn sites, all of them were blocked. We need a similar initiative. We must make pirated content as hard to access as porn sites,” says Andhare. The other is the speed of reaction. “The IT ministry cannot take action on blocking pirate sites. You need a court order and courts are reluctant to issue them unless there is a genuine threat. And even after one it takes 48 hours for an ISP or telco to react. You are dead by that time,” says Nair. “Since blocking is a non-billable process, ISPs are reluctant to execute it immediately,” explains Kumar.
The big elephant in the debate around piracy is audience attitude. Most people do not think that piracy equals thievery. How can the industry tackle that one? “Start with an understanding of how your audience is engaging with piracy — what are the key drivers and traffic sources — search engines, social media, and referral sites? Measure anti-piracy activities closely, and look for initiatives that generate a higher engagement. Treat the piracy audience as an opportunity,” says Elkins.
That means making it easier and faster for consumers to watch legitimate content. This in turn means more screens and online options. The boom in online video apps, there are dozens of them, is good news then.
