Big-budget movies and production houses have increased spending on anti-piracy measures, working with cyber-security firms to curb loss of revenue from illegal copying of their works.
Another primary reason for curbing piracy is to enable Bollywood production houses to sign exclusive with streaming services including Netflix and Amazon after a movie finishes its run in multiplexes and theatres.
The production houses work with cyber-security firms, which flag instances of piracy to them after spotting them online through human intervention and with the help of technology.
“We have been working with a few cyber-security companies to see if any such content is leaked online, which can then be identified immediately and the issue can be raised with the publisher and copyright owners,” said Manav Sethi, group chief marketing officer of EROS International, which co-produces, acquires and distributes Indian language films in multiple formats worldwide.
Sethi said that for movies or online content to be successful these days, it is crucial to pull down content as soon as it is flagged for piracy.
According to Manan Shah, a cyber-security professional who has started providing artificial intelligence-based anti-piracy services, tie-ups with film companies are generally for a minimum of two weeks, covering the theatre run. However, some contracts could go up to a year, when these movies are made available on streaming services.
“The starting price is Rs 4 lakh, but if a movie has a superstar as the protagonist, the price shoots up because the risks for these leaks are higher,” Shah said.
If a movie features Alia Bhatt or Ranveer Singh, it is likely to be a hit and the anti-piracy service prices will go up by 20-30%, said Shah, who recently provided the service to movies including Zero and The Accidental Prime Minister. He added that such services are also in demand for music videos and web-series that are available on over-the-top (OTT) entities.
“Top OTTs like Netflix or Amazon outsource these services from the US, where the market is more mature,” said Shah.
“Piracy needs tactical actions along with strategic measures,” says Abhishek Dhoreliya, founder of Markscan, a company that helps the entertainment industry fight piracy. “On the strategic front, the content owners across genres need to come together and fight the menace since every property across genres is at risk. In the movie industry particularly, strategic moves are being taken globally whereas closer home, there is much more to be done.”
While global content owners across genres are fighting both with tactical and strategic measures, Bollywood’s top-notch production houses have only now recently started to take steps on tactical front, but they are still in nascent stages with non existent collaboration and little focus on strategic actions to compromise the entire ecosystem supporting the piracy, adds Dhoreliya.
Netflix has tied-up with the Motion Picture Association of America, a trade association representing the six major film studios of Hollywood that acts as the voice of the film and television industry. Experts suggested that this move was mainly to fight piracy. Such measures are still lacking in India, they said.
Even with the help of cyber-security companies, fighting online piracy isn’t easy as websites keep changing their IP addresses and URLs, making it harder to crack down on them. The government, acknowledging the problem, proposed in this year’s Union Budget to introduce an anti-camcording provision in the Cinematography Act to combat film privacy.
The film sector loses $2.8 billion of its total revenue to piracy annually, according to a FICCI-EY study in March 2018.
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