Newer technologies can help contain menace
It may be difficult to join the dots between actor Kirti Sannon's recent experience on an airplane, where she told off a fellow passenger watching a pirated version of her film, and the much-awaited announcement from Netflix that it will soon be starting operations in India. But once the connection is made, the full story about piracy and the Indian film and television industry becomes clear. That online piracy is a gargantuan problem in this country needs no elucidation, and neither does the fact that the entertainment industry in particular loses crores of rupees due to this menace (though the estimates vary wildly because we aren’t able to gauge how much pirated material is going around). Yet, in practice, the industry doesn't seem to care much about piracy.
There are no visible efforts, for example, to lobby policymakers to strengthen copyright laws or urge law enforcement to crackdown on those who source and distribute pirated content. Alliance Against Copyright Theft, the anti-piracy coalition of big media players like Reliance Entertainment, Moser Baer Entertainment, UTV Motion Pictures, Eros International and the Motion Picture Dist. Association, India, formed in 2010, is now defunct. This lack of concern is possibly because, inspite of rampant piracy, the industry is still raking in hundreds of crores in profit. Also, there is a general perception that online piracy is too prolific to be contained, that it isn’t possible to stop people from illegally accessing freely available content.
But the situation is about to be turned on its head this year, once Netflix, and eventually other similar services, enter the Indian market. At the Consumer Electronic Show currently underway in las Vegas, the world's largest video streaming company is expected to announce its India foray in collaboration with a telecommunications major. Netflix has already revolutionised the way films and serials are consumed in much of the Western word — today, for less than nine dollars a month, viewers can access huge volumes of HD-quality content at their convenience.
And it is expected to disrupt the status quo in this country as well, especially for the burgeoning number of online consumers viewing content on mobile phones. This is not to suggest that a Netflix will overnight threaten established players (India is too big and complicated a market) but it should have a perceptible impact on piracy. For example, many view content illegally because it is not legally available in the Indian market. This should change dramatically, especially if the Australian experience is anything to go by — Netflix went Down Under last year, and along with some home-grown competitors, it has helped increase the number of viewers using legal pay-per-view or streaming services while piracy has dropped considerably. Another factor that should also help is the new ‘three strikes' anti-piracy code that has already been a huge success in France. India too should consider a similar strategy.