For years now the Indian Film Industry has been crying hoarse over the crippling effects of video piracy. If statistics are to be believed the cost of piracy amounts to Rs 4,640 crore annually. Bollywood wants us to believe that it is a victim to the nefarious pirates of the digital world; however, with a little introspection, one can easily come to the conclusion that this is a simple case of what goes around comes around.
Here are the reasons why I feel that Bollywood isn’t exactly the proverbial abla naari:
1) For years now, I have seen Bollywood copy music, story and dialogues frame by frame, every alternate frame and even frames arranged in Fibonacci series. Ideas have been “borrowed” from every imaginable corner of the globe without citing the source, let alone buying legal rights. As long as Bollywood boasts of incorrigible plagiarists like Anu Malik, Pritam, Priyadarshan…it does not really qualify for any sympathy votes.
2) If you open the newspapers, you’ll find that every second movie is a box office super hit, raking in record box office collection. However, the first hand experience more often than not tends to differ by a long shot. It is such unethical marketing gimmicks that forced people to test the waters before diving in head first. What better way to do so than by sampling a pirated movie within the safe confines of your home. Also, if every movie is creating a new box office record, how exactly is the industry losing money to piracy?
3) When all other means failed, Bollywood decided to deter piracy by using pathetic excuses like, “Money generated from pirated DVDs is routed into terror operations”. What a cheap shot! It is no secret that for years the underworld has been pouring money into the film industry. How else do you explain a movie like Jaani Dushman? Money generated from such ventures is definitely not used to install drinking water facilities at Tirupati Balaji. If Bollywood is really concerned about national security maybe it should just shut shop so that there isn’t even the remotest possibility of any threat to the country.
I was really surprised when actors like Jackky Bhagnani and Harman Baweja did not come forward in support of piracy all guns blazing. If it weren’t for cheap pirated DVDs, not a single soul with a functioning brain would have ever experienced the horror that these two satanic entities are capable of unleashing upon the world.
I am not an advocate of piracy. I just believe that give credit where it is really due. If Bollywood wants to cut down the losses due to piracy it can start by putting a lid on the exorbitant prices demanded by some of the current movie stars, hosting ostentatious release parties and flying the stars in economy class rather than a private jet for shoots and promotion. Frankly speaking if some of these pampered and talentless movie stars make a crore less on each film it does not really kill my appetite!
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Posts: 7
Reply #7 on : Sat October 17, 2009, 05:38:56