'Film ind loses up to Rs 4,000 cr to piracy'

The 14,000-crore Indian film industry lost a whopping Rs 3,000-4,000 crore in the last financial year to rampant video and music piracy, a top production house official said.

“The film industry incurred a revenue loss of Rs 4,000 crore last year due to video piracy,” Shemaroo Entertainment Director Hiren Gada told PTI here.

Gada said the video and music piracy market is estimated at around Rs 1,000 crore and is growing at an alarming rate.

On the arrest of one of his employees by the Mumbai Crime Branch recently in this regard, Gada said though an employee was arrested by the police in connection with alleged piracy of the film What’s Your Rashee, the company had nothing to do with the incident.

“We strongly condemn such illegal activities and have our own anti-piracy team in place. We have strong ethics and the person’s service has been terminated,” he added.

The arrested employee was responsible for the overseas distribution of Shemaroo, Gada said, adding that the company was fully co-operating with the authorities in their investigations.

When asked about the number of pirated videos being sold in the global market, Gada said about 90 per cent of the videos (volume-wise) sold were pirated.

Citing an example, he said “the Brussels Airport authority had intercepted 15,000 fake DVDs of our film Mere Baap Pehle Aaap prior to its release in 2008.”

On the measures needed to be taken to curb the menace, Gada said the entire film and music industry should form a common forum and raise funds to conduct an anti-piracy awareness campaign and sensitise people in this regard.

He further said the government should create a dedicated enforcement machinery to check violation of copyright and take stringent action against the culprits.