India and piracy
India, like all developing nations, is a haven for piracy. Be it software for PC or Mac, or CD of mp3 songs of all the releases of the month. All are available for sale for Rs 25/- (USD 0.5) at the corner shop of any major market. DVDs, CDs, games, you name it, you get it.
In India, one of the main industries affected is the Indian film industry, which produces the largest number of films per year in the world. An important part of this industry is the Hindi film industry. This industry based in Mumbai (Bombay) is affectionately called Bollywood. Whether it’s the music or the movie itself, everything is pirated and available on the streets, or online on countless websites, or through P2P software like Kaaza, eDonkey and others.
movie piracy
Movies that are released in India are usually pirated in the same week (over the weekend) as the release of the movie. The so-called Hall Prints are available for sale at streets and CD vendors on Sundays or Mondays across the country. Even local CD rentals make those CDs available within the same week. Although these copies are awful and the soundtrack is pathetic, the public doesn’t care either, saving at least Rs 60/- to 125/- per person if they go to the nearest multiplex. That works out to be around Rs 250/- for the whole family.
The irony
But the irony of history does not begin here. The very movies that are pirated on the streets are often piracy themselves! Now that is the twist that is the most amazing. The fact is that the movies this industry produces are pirated to varying degrees from other theaters around the world. The great cinema at a loss is that of Hollywood, but that is not the end. Language or country is not a barrier in piracy. If a movie is good, the directors/producers don’t think twice before copying it and packaging it in a different container for the Indian public.
Pirate Level
The level of piracy varies from movie to movie. Some of the movies are scene-to-scene and dialogue-to-dialogue copies, others are just plot copies or story copies. Some go and do a mix and match by copying several different movies to provide soup for the audience. Some simply copy scenes or sequences and add them to their movies. Songs are another major source of piracy and pages can be written about it.
pirate story
It’s not like movies are getting pirated in recent years, either. It is a fact that even veterans used to pirate the movies. I remember this classic example of hacking. In one of Devanand’s major films, a short sequence of the villain’s lair was ripped out as if it were one of the James Bond movies. It was, I think, only 2 seconds of the movie that were ripped off, but it’s completely disgusting. To copy the entire movie, take the example of 1980’s The Burning Train starring the greats of that era like Dharmender, Vinod Khanna, and Jitendar. This movie was a copy of a Japanese Shinkansen Daibakuha movie that was released in 1975.
Recent victims of this Bollywood (hence Bollywean) piracy are the Korean movie Oldboy (Zinda), the English movie Man on Fire (Ek Ajnabee). The list goes on. Most of the commercial films that are made have some element torn from the other cinemas of the world.
current awareness
It is also true that today awareness of this piracy is increasing day by day. In the movie reviews, the critic mentions the movie from which he was drawn. The internet has many discussion forum posts talking about this hack. There are dedicated sites that record and track piracy in Bollywood produced movies.
I sincerely hope that such a spread of knowledge will curb piracy and ultimately cause these Bollywean Pirates to also become extinct like all other pirates of the seas. To get this information, I have maintained the site http://www.akhilesh.in/life/india/bollywoodinspirations.php where such pirated movies are reviewed and ranked.
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