Youth falling to the lure of film piracy business

In order to make quick bucks, people involved in film piracy are luring minors and youngsters in the city.
Telugu film industry has lost more than C1,000 cr due to piracy | representative pix
Telugu film industry has lost more than C1,000 cr due to piracy | representative pix

CUDDALORE: In order to make quick bucks, people involved in film piracy are luring minors and youngsters in the city. Earlier, film piracy was an organised crime, but now it is decentralised, where the piracy makers are mostly targeting the student community.“The offer to the youngsters is that they would get 10 dollars into their bank accounts, if they videographed and sent it on the first day of release of the film,” said  A Raj Kumar, Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce representative and Anti-Video Piracy Committee chairman. “The minors and youngsters are getting attracted to the money, not knowing that piracy is a crime,” Raj Kumar added.

Raj Kumar added that from past 16 months, piracy in Telugu film industry is on rise.According to him, the estimated loss the Telugu film industry faced due to the piracy is `1,007 crore. Around 215 films were released in the last 16 months.A high-level meeting was convened at the Secretariat on Monday to take measures against the film piracy. IT, Cyber Crime police, film personalities including Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce president P Kiran, representatives from Motion Pictures, Ministry of Industrial Policy officials were present at the meeting.

“We have been working from 2014 to curb film piracy under the Telangana Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Tipcu).“Earlier, the pirated film version was made available online on the first day of the release of the movie. Now, the pirated version is available three weeks after the release of the film. The first two weeks after the release of the film is very important for any film producer,” IT principal secretary Jayesh Ranjan said.

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