Indian movies earn $2 billion but lose $2.7 billion to piracy

A still from the Tamil movie Kabali starring the actor Rajinikanth. Just a day before it was released, footage was leaked online.

India's film industry, said to be the largest globally with some 1,000 movies produced each year, earns around $2 billion from legitimate sources such as screening at theatres, home videos and TV rights. But with $2.7 billion, piracy earns 35 per cent more, and a way out has proved elusive.

Red Chillies Entertainment, a production house promoted by actor Shah Rukh Khan, was a victim of film piracy with Dilwale last year. It grossed Rs1.48 billion at the box office, but its pirated version, circulated a day before its release, grossed a much higher amount.

Recent films such as Kabali, Great Grand Masti and Udta Punjab have all faced similar music.

"Content theft or piracy in the film industry originates from camcording in cinema halls. Over 90 per cent of new release titles originate from cinemas," said Uday Singh, managing director, Motion Picture Distributors' Association (India).

"The infringing copies appear online within a few hours of a film release," Singh said, adding: "The Indian film industry loses around Rs180 billion [$2.7 billion] and over 60,000 jobs every year because of piracy."

This figure is also what the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) cites in its magazine.

Threat looms large
According to the latest KPMG-Ficci report on the Indian media and entertainment sector, the film industry is projected to grow from Rs138.2 billion ($2.09 billion) in 2015 to Rs226.3 billion ($3.43 billion) by 2020 at an annual growth rate of 10.5 per cent. But piracy could also grow exponentially.

Patrick Kilbride, executive director for International IP with Global Intellectual Property Centre of the US Chamber of Commerce, said piracy also limits the economic contribution which creativity can make in India.

"Issues such as copyright infringement, film piracy, camcording and content leakage weaken the industry by hampering revenue production," said Kilbride.

Stakeholders said some sophisticated technologies such as the watermarking of prints have also not been able to stop piracy.

"New technologies, including digitisation of film prints, have cut the cost of recording, storing and copying of films for distribution. Risks involved in leaking and piracy have also increased," said Lavin Hirani, head of legal affairs, Red Chillies Entertainment.

"Unfortunately, these technologies are not enough to protect the clandestine recording of pirated versions - done 90 per cent of the times with a camcorder or high-quality mobile camera in a low-light setting of a cinema theatre, or from the projector room," Hirani said.

There is also the recent prevalence of pirated versions of Indian films swarming the market and the Internet a day or two before their actual release, since distributors opt for a simultaneous global screening, which requires the dispatch of prints some 10 to 12 days in advance.

"Some territories like in the UAE, they release films a day prior to the Indian release date - which is typically a Friday. This is one of the reasons why a film is leaked before its actual release," he added. - IANS