Digital Piracy and My 01 Cents

Decimal or binary, it won’t make much of a difference – of course, ‘my 01 cents’ is ‘my two cents.’ I could add more, but that is where digital piracy is taking some of my (rather large) investments.

Earlier on TeluGlobe, Krishna Chaitanya posted an excellent article on digital piracy and its effect on the Telugu entertainment industry. I was going to add to that but lately, finding time has become a kind of luxury for me.

First, here is my a quick comment on digital piracy. Piracy is not just the problem of entertainment industry. As a director on the board of TeluguOne, I know how piracy can affect businesses and jobs, Not to belabor the point – there is a connection between cheap  money (read Feds) and piracy. When new companies only created number of  ‘eye-balls’ as business (dot-coms) as opposed to real business, and still got rewarded via sky high stock prices, it is inevitable to see the fall-out. [More on this later.]

Today Subba Rao garu commented on Krishna Chaitanya’s post. This well articulated  argument deserves to be a stand-alone article. Here it is:

The cost of making movies is always high and many crores are at stake. Producer puts all his money to make more money. Basically he is investing his money for better returns. But due to piracy he is losing viewership and money too. Are all the producers losing money? No. I don’t think so. Big producers are getting their investment with returns even before the movie is released by what they call “marketing”. It is always the small time producer who is effected by this piracy. And who is responsible for this? The government? People who watch the pirated movies? I don’t think so. The people who are responsible for creating this situation are big time producers/actors. They offer huge remuneration to actors and technicians. This makes the price of the ticket sky-high. How many can afford this? So people who cant afford this go for pirated versions. I am not supporting the people who watch/encourage the pirated versions of the movies.

This piracy cannot be prevented. Movie is for entertainment and everybody wants some fun in their life. The best way is to bring in some change in the economics of movies. If a movie is declared a hit, everyone who has a role in it deserves a pat on the back and and if it bombs they will have to share the pain too..

So, my idea is all the big cheques should be stopped.

The technicians/extras should be paid as they should. The high paid people should be paid token amount when signing. After the movie is released and the profits should be shared between the high paid actors/technicians. If there is loss, the burnt should be shared and the high paid will not get anything.

But for all these, The ticket prices in theaters should be brought down. Anyone would love to watch a new movie in a theater where the print is crystal clear with great sound. No one would love to watch a movie in cam print or another which is not master and without great sound.

Will this happen? Not sure. How many big producers supported this movie producer who went on strike.?

Anyway this is my opinion.