The Hindu : Tackling the piracy menace

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 10, 2003

Opinion

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Tackling the piracy menace

PIRACY IS A painful and an utterly repulsive practice. It often kills the spirit of art, and, what is more, cuts into profits. Whether it be print or music or film piracy, this contemptible thievery has destroyed the lives of many. Despite stringent laws to check all forms of piracy — and in spite of great awareness against them — it is still common to see the pages of a book or the notes in a music cassette or the frames of a movie being freely copied in blatant violation of copyright acts, and in utter disregard to human values and sentiment. But, of all kinds of piracy, it is the one that happens in cinema which is most terrifying. For, here huge money is involved: imagine a work of celluloid which costs crores of rupees being duplicated in cassettes or disks and distributed through video parlours. If the latest Bond film, "Die Another Day" is now being telecast by one of the TV channels in open defiance of the law, it is most common to find brand new movies in video parlours sometimes hours after the premier shows. At a time when a picture has the best chance of breaking even or earning a profit in the first few weekends after its release, nothing can be more disastrous than a pirated version simultaneously finding its way into a drawing room.

Given the current level of technology, copying a film is easy. Pirates get hold of a print the moment it lands at an overseas port, plagiarise it immediately and send copies back to India. Another way of doing this is to connive with a theatre, and take a camera print. Instances of a Tamil or Hindi work being available in a cassette or disk in places as far apart as Japan and Holland just a day or two after it has opened in India are not rare. Of course, pirated stuff is of very poor quality: the sound is hardly audible, and the images can be unclear. But in a nation of a billion people, most find a cinema ticket still expensive. And if a family or group of even three persons can watch a picture for, let us say, Rs. 15, and in the comfort of a drawing-room, this arrangement appears ideally economic in a sense.

Piracy is a deep-rooted evil which offers no easy solution. One can harp on a wider and more effective enforcement of the law. Punishment can be far more severe, but with a police force that is easily corruptible, pirates will continue to rule the high seas of cinema. However, a key remedy lies with the film fraternity. It is imperative that the cost of production is cut: stars still demand and get an almost vulgar share of it. At the exhibition stage, producers must realise that most movies do not run beyond a few weeks in a hall. Admittedly, some travel to smaller towns and villages later, but there the appeal is confined to a highly select kind of fare and even starcast. It is time, therefore, for producers to work out an arrangement with video parlour networks and satellite channels where a picture is legally transferred to a cassette or disk 45 days after its theatrical release. Japan, for example, has adopted this system with excellent results. After all, nobody is willing to watch a film at home months after it has been shown in auditoriums and written about. A shorter road between the big and the small screen seems ideal. And, why not offer cheaper tickets for students and citizens beyond 60? Certainly, youngsters still enjoy an outing at the cinema, and they probably form the single largest group among the audience, and perhaps the most enthusiastic. Capitalise on these, and hit pirates hard where it hurts the most.

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