Pirated copies of blockbusters flood Net

Like many Indians, author and socialite Shobhaa De confesses she has watched Slumdog Millionaire on a pirated CD, much before its release in India.

The movie — which bagged many international accolades such as four Golden Globe and BAFTA awards, and was screened at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals — was premiered on Thursday in India.

The pirated copy of the movie is available for free on a number of peer-to-peer websites. Some of the accessed sites for downloading the movie are desibbrg.com, rapidshare.com, bhejafry.net and isohunt.com among others.

However, this is not restricted to Slumdog Millionaire (Slumdog Crorepati in Hindi) alone, as pirated versions of most of the recent big-budget movies are available for free downloading on the web. The copies of the recent big-budget movies such as Ghajini, Chandni Chowk to China and Rab Ne Bane Di Jodi were also available much before their release.

According to Internet expert and head of IT for the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) Vijay Mukhi, "The whole concept is called 'Torrent', where in a user downloads a book or a movie and then shares it with many others over the net. It all started with pirating of books and putting it on the web, and then to music and now to movies."

Mukhi has the first-hand experience of some of his books on Internet and web technology being circulated on the web using the Torrent concept.

Piracy had cost Indian film and entertainment business a whopping $4 billion last year, with the film industry alone taking a hit of over $1 billion, according to an Ernst & Young and US-India Business Council study. Another independent study, puts the global entertainment industry losses over $18.2 billion as of 2008.

From where do they get the prints as these are put out before the releases? An industry analyst, who sought anonymity, said, "These websites get copies from the versions sent to international film festivals, awards and, at times from the studios itself. This makes the quality of the movies on sites much similar to that of the original print. The Internet service providers (ISPs) should be blamed, as they should be blocking these sites at their end."

Internet Service Providers Association of India's (ISPAI) founder and executive member Amitabh Singhal said that he was aware of the piracy over the web.

"It's virtually impossible to monitor and censor content on the web, due to its open nature. There is really no mechanism to filter copyrighted stuff, but if such stuff are identified then we can locate the site and ask the webmaster to remove it," he said.

Mukhi says that the film industry needs to take a tough call. It should get at least 10 high-profile pirates arrested as the US industry did. "The movie industry is not reacting," he added.