The Indian entertainment industry may be worth

Rs.500 billion, but the movie segment loses Rs.160 billion annually to

piracy.

This startling revelation was made by Ron Summers, president of

US-India Business Council (USIBC), at the recent Ficci-Frames global

convention on media and entertainment in Mumbai.

He said the global revenue share of the Indian film industry was only

two percent of the total annual gross income of Hollywood, primarily

because pirates usurped a good chunk of the Indian movie revenue

earned from the domestic and international markets.

“Apart from adopting effective legal measures to pre-empt piracy,

efforts should also be made to extract maximum value proposition

from the entertainment content. The best way to do it is by cashing in

on the technological advancement witnessed globally in electronics,”

the USIBC president said.

Noted Bollywood filmmaker Yash Chopra admitted that it would not

be possible to root out the external market force of piracy, which has

entrenched itself too deeply over the years.

“But we can’t afford to resign ourselves to this fact. We must identify

measures to mitigate the hold of this force over the market. We must

understand the enormous potential of the digital media and try to get

value out of it.

“We have to beat pirates in their own game. But to be able to do this,

we need the help of the regulatory bodies,” Chopra said.

According to the secretary in the Information and Broadcasting

ministry, Asha Swarup, the only way to tackle piracy was to ensure

tight security in the supply chain.

“Simultaneous or quick release of movies on the Internet or home

video could be an alternative to curb piracy,” she said, citing how

distributors of “Jab We Met” benefited from this strategy recently.

Chief executive officer of Sony Entertainment, Kunal Dasgupta, also

touched upon this paradigm shift in movie distribution.

“By releasing ‘Jab We Met’ in the home video circuit soon after its

release in theatres, Moser Baer not only managed to reduce piracy, but

also earned more revenue,” he said.

Dasgupta believed that a large number of people would want to watch

a movie in the theatres even if CDs and DVDs were available in the

market.