 "Kabali: The angry old man")
Two days before the release of Rajinikanth starrer Kabali, which hit the screens on July 22, a video clip with the introductory scene threatened to be a spoiler.
Given the hype surrounding the movie, this could have hurt revenues. However, the links were immediately removed from social media by audio/video content distribution company Whacked Out Media, which was roped in for digital amplification of the movie on social media and YouTube. An anti-piracy team, part of the Andhra Pradesh Film Chamber of Commerce, also worked with the company to curb piracy on social media.
“We picked out 15,000 links on all social media platforms within a week. On Friday alone, the day movie was released, we took down 7,000 links. We also co-ordinated the entire backend with the anti-piracy team, hired by the producer on our recommendation,” said Rama Krishna Veerapaneni, managing director of Whacked Out Media.
The firm is the digital wing of Mango Mass Media Group and one of Asia’s largest YouTube Multi Channel Networks (MCNs). Veerapaneni said the company's primary focus is digital amplification of movies on social media, and efforts to curb piracy are a value-added service it provides clients.
The company’s asset management team, which has around eight experts, along with around 15 members in the anti-piracy team, worked round the clock with the social media team collecting links to unauthorised uploads, pointed out by Rajini fans. The links were cleaned up from YouTube, Google Docs, Skydrives, Facebook and Dailymotion.
The film fraternity has been working on sealing leaks from the processing channel, with the support of digital projection companies such as UFO, Real Image and Scrabble, which insert particular codes into each copy that goes out to distributors and theatres, based on which the source of the leaked copy could be identified. However, recording the movie using camcoder and uploading has become another menace. In the case of Kabali, the team encountered a new problem of the audience recording the entire movie on a smart phone.
Lauding the efforts of Whacked Up Media, Kalaippuli S Thanu, the producer of Kabali said, “Their entry is very helpful for the industry. They are helping this business grow”.
Thanu, also president of Tamil Nadu Film Chamber of Commerce, said two days before the release of the movie, that piracy was causing a loss of Rs 18,000 crore to the Indian industry and around Rs 1,000 crore to the Tamil industry. He said smaller movies suffer more because of piracy because bigger movies have stars who can attract viewers to theatres.
Monetise links
While Whacked Out Media has said anti-piracy operations are ancillary, it feels there is an opportunity for producers to make money out of unauthorised links.
About 20-30 days after a movie releases, the links can be monetised, says Veerapaneni. “Around 20 per cent of revenue that we get from YouTube, comes from content that our asset management team gets,” he added.
“The lesson that industry has not learned is that we need to treat the content available to the consumer at the right price,” he said. If people understand that the movie is going to be available legally in a week or two, they will not download from unauthorised sites. This is how Bollywood tackled piracy to an extent, where the content would be made available in DVD format a week or two after the release, he says.
