Pirates Vs. Movie makers

THIS IS BATTLEGROUND INDIA, with activists for a free Internet pitted against copyright holders. The latest round started when the producers of the Tamil movie 3 asked the Madras High Court for a pre-emptive injunction against the illegal uploading of the film. An interim order to 15 companies (including the major Internet service providers such as Airtel, Tata, Reliance, and MTNL) and “Ashok Kumar, unknown person” was issued on March 29. The film was released the next day to mixed reviews, and illegal copies of 3 were up on most file-sharing sites despite the court order.

The Bombay High Court issued similar John Doe orders (any court order against unknown persons) earlier for different movies (including one asked for by Reliance Entertainment for Singham), with similar effect. Internet service providers (ISPs) occasionally blocked some links, but there were always ways around these blocks. Then in May, the ISPs decided to act. Representatives of the major ISPs say they were merely following court orders. This time, instead of blocking specific files or links, they blocked access to all file-sharing and BitTorrent sites, including The Pirate Bay, Vimeo, and Pastebin. On May 18, visitors to these sites were greeted with a single line that said: “Access to this site has been blocked as per Court orders”. Social media sites were flooded with rants against the ISPs and the courts; the producers of 3 came in for criticism as well, particularly since its promo song (Why This Kolaveri Di) went viral on the same medium that was now being restricted on their request.

Blocking specific sites, said users, was censorship. Anonymous, an online community that fights issues of internet freedom, got into the act. The group has no known leaders, but there are anonymous members who man the chat forums that serve as message boards for all users.

From May 18, the Anonymous boards were all about how to punish the various bodies responsible for the blocked sites—the government, the courts, movie producers, and their lawyers. Anonymous coordinated the takedown of several websites (including the ministry ofcommunications and IT, the Supreme Court, the Congress party, and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team). There were also demonstrations organised in several cities, where activists protesting Internet censorship took to the streets wearing Anonymous’s trademark Guy Fawkes masks.

One of the reasons for the escalation of protests was that access to even legal file-sharing sites had been blocked. One frustrated user complained on Twitter: “I work with people who upload original content on Vimeo. How the f*** I’m supposed to work if govt. blocks Vimeo?” (Even as the protests gathered momentum, online forums offered ways around the blocks. Some directed users to cloaking sites—which the ISPs can’t detect—while others told more tech-savvy users how to change the computer registry to become virtually invisible to ISPs. It was business as usual for those who used BitTorrent and file-sharing sites.)

On June 15, the Madras High Court issued a clarification order (reports say some ISPs blocked, not entire sites. The ISPs lifted the blocks as quietly as they had imposed them. Activists, led by Anonymous, claimed victory.

The movie industry, however, saw nothing to cheer about. “Piracy in the form of physical CD sales and online downloads is estimated to be around 40% to 50% of the film trade,” says a 2011 report on entertainment by Deloitte Touche Tomhatsu India, commissioned by industry body Assocham. It adds up to a massive loss, whether for a Rs 200 crore movie such as Ek Tha Tiger or the small-budget (under Rs 5 crore) That Girl in Yellow Boots.

The industry is up against much more than angry activists wearing masks; a 2009 Rand Corporation report explored the relationship between piracy and organised crime syndicates, from al Qaeda to Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company, to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The report, funded by a grant from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), says: “Criminal proceeds are fungible, and profits from counterfeiting can fund startups in other criminal enterprises, or vice versa. It is all money.”

THE INDIAN ENTRY to the Oscars this year is the romantic comedy Barfi, which was released on September 14. That very day, file-sharing sites were crammed with purportedly great rips of the movie. A day after, I went to watch it at a Delhi multiplex, paying over Rs 350 for a ticket. A short distance from the multiplex, 20-year-old Praveen Kumar is selling Barfi DVDs for Rs 30. He’s doing brisk business, and refuses to give discounts to several customers who are evidently regulars. “I get the discs from ‘big people’ in Nehru Place [considered India’s largest computer hardware market] for Rs 18 each,” he says. “This will sell very well—till the next big movie is released.”

Who are these “big people”, I ask. He refuses to answer, but I later get an answer from A.A. Khan. Once Mumbai’s most feared cop (movies have been made about him) who took on and killed notorious gangsters, Khan left the police force to train his guns on copyright theft, particularly in movies. His company, A.A. Khan and Associates, is often hired by big studios to track and destroy illegal DVDs. “We go after them at the street level and then trace it deep into their network, going from source to source,” he says, adding that this almost always leads back to the crime bosses for whom film piracy is easy money. An Ernst & Young study estimates that the profit from the pirated optical disc market (CDs, DVDs, VCDs, and Blu-ray) can go up to 800% of the original investment.

The first step in the journey of a pirated movie DVD is recording a movie, often using a handheld camcorder or even a mobile phone. Uday Singh, managing director of MPA in India, says 95% of pirated movies come from camcorder prints. Indore, Gwalior, suburbs of Ahmedabad, and Ghaziabad are gaining notoriety as recording hubs.

Cam prints, especially of digitised movies, are often made in connivance with the movie hall manager or projector operator. Rajeev Kamineni, executive director of PVP Pictures, which produced the Rs 35 crore Telugu movie Eega, says the Tamil version of the movie was copied even before it was released. He says the cops discovered that the projector operator in a movie hall in Coimbatore was paid Rs 9,000 to set up a show in the middle of the night (a few hours before the official release), with sound output going directly into the recorder rather than to the speakers for fear of waking up the neighbours.

The cam prints are sent to centres in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, or Pakistan, where they are copied on to cheap DVDs. The Rand report details the trail from Mumbai to Dubai to Karachi. One of the names familiar to most Bollywood producers in this field is Pakistan-based Sadaf Trading Company. Sadaf was a key element in making and distributing pirated DVDs for criminal organisation D-Company. “Only after 2005, when U.S. Customs seized a large shipment of Sadaf-branded counterfeit discs in Virginia, did Pakistani authorities, under the threat of trade sanctions, begin raiding D-Company’s duplicating facilities in Karachi,” says the Rand report. Sadaf was forced to shut down, but Bollywood insiders swear it’s still around in a different guise. And that’s just one of the many agencies involved.

Given the kind of money and muscle it’s up against, the Hindi film industry is unable to manage a sustained fight against piracy. Add to this the fragmented nature of the industry, and it’s easy to see why it’s a fight they can lose. “Producers aren’t interested in sustained funding to fight industry-wide piracy. They only do it when they have films to release. You cannot selectively fight crime,” says Khan. Sanjay Tandon, vice president, music and anti-piracy, at Reliance Entertainment, echoes Khan.

There have been attempts at presenting a united front. In 2009, MPA India along with four companies—UTV, Eros International, Reliance Entertainment, and Moser Baer—set up AACT or the Alliance Against Copyright Theft. One of the group’s main objectives was to seize and destroy fake DVDs. Rip-offs of Dum Maaro Dum, Break Ke Baad, and I Hate Luv Storys, were seized within days of them hitting the streets. AACT also tried to create awareness; it distributed a comic book titled Escape from Terror Byte City to kids who download pirated movies. But these efforts cost money, and AACT’s coffers were running dry.

For AACT to be effective, industry insiders estimate minimum annual commitments of Rs 40 lakh to Rs 50 lakh from each major studio with smaller amounts from smaller independent producers. That’s chump change for studios that spend at least 10 to 20 times the amount in making and promoting a single movie. However, producers don’t see the point of paying an annual fee if they don’t have movies lined up for the year.

The industry doesn’t have much incentive in spending on this fight. For one, most losses due to piracy don’t materially affect fortunes. Unlike in the U.S., movies here don’t have a long tail; there’s not much money in promoting a movie after it has been in the theatres for 10 days or so. The home video market in the U.S. is a moneyspinner long after the movie release, and it is this segment that gets hit hardest by piracy. In India, the release window is everything. Prakash Bare, a Malayalam movie actor, and the force behind Jadootech Solutions, a company that tracks illegal uploads of movies, wants to experiment with the long tail by setting up a movie streaming company. But for that to make economic sense, the piracy problem must be tackled.

Khan also blames the fragmented nature of the industry in India; in the U.S., he says, there’s an established studio system. Here, it’s each producer for himself. This is where Bollywood can take a leaf out of the South Indian film industry’s book. The Tamil industry, for instance, lobbies as a group against piracy. When the Madras High Court issued the John Doe order in the case of 3, it was backed by prominent voices, including Rajinikanth’s and Kamal Haasan’s families.

In Kerala, the industry roped in the police to form an anti-piracy cell. Rajpal Meena, an officer and part of the force, says the cell is authorised to track all copyright violations and take action (such as filing cases against those sharing pirated movies). “After the crackdown on various sources of piracy started, the box-office collections of Malayalam movies increased by around 40%,” claims Meena.

In Tamil Nadu, meanwhile, the most potent deterrent to piracy is Rajinikanth. It’s almost impossible for a Rajinikanth movie will be copied illegally in the first 10 days of its release in the state. Dilli Rajini, president of the Rajinikanth Fan Club in Chennai, says that on the day of the release, the fan club asks the city commissioner of police for extra security inside movie halls. If that does not deter pirates, the fans themselves step in and stop anyone from using recording devices in the theatre. Also, there’s enough supply to meet the huge demand; there are special shows that start at 5 a.m. and run house full. Anurag Kashyap, director of movies such as Gangs of Wasseypur and Dev.D, says this is the best way the industry can reduce piracy—better movies which draw crowds to the theatres, and fan loyalty.

Since not every movie can star Rajinikanth, multiplex chains such as Cinemax are trying to prevent camcorder recordings; staff patrol the hall as the movie is shown, and night-vision cameras have been installed in some halls. Others are making movie watching more affordable. Mumbai-based K Sera Sera has launched what it calls a “miniplex” format, economy multiplexes meant for malls in lower-income localities; the halls are smaller, and each ticket costs roughly Rs 70. Vinod Ahuja, chairman and managing director of K Sera Sera says the company has signed agreements for 118 halls that will run as franchises. But these are small efforts.

WHAT THE INDUSTRY NEEDS is a silver bullet that can kill piracy, and going digital may be it. Digitisation will help take the fight to the next level, if not eliminate copyright theft, says Senthil Kumar, co-founder of Real Image and Qube, two of India’s largest companies engaged in digital movie encryption and distribution, and a leading voice in South India against piracy.

Digitally mastering a movie so that it can be shown using a digital projection system instead of the conventional film reels is cheaper and more convenient (a film print of a standard three-hour movie costs around Rs 60,000; a digital print of the same costs Rs 10,000). More important, invisible forensic watermarks are embedded in every digital print.

When pirated DVDs are analysed in the studio, the watermarks become visible, providing all sorts of data including the name of the theatre it was shown in and the time of the show. This is shared with the producer, and it is up to him to take further action. Often, the mere threat of withholding future films is enough to make movie hall owners more vigilant. Kumar says there have been several arrests of movie hall owners complicit in illegal recording in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, all traced with forensic watermarking. The content in these digital systems is safeguarded with 192-bit encryption, supposedly as secure as online banking. The key to open these files is given to movie halls the night before the release and is limited to a certain number of screenings.

Equally important is the fact that digital prints are easier to distribute (they can be downloaded via a secure satellite link), so movies can reach more centres. Rajesh Mishra, CEO, Indian operations at UFO Movies, explains why this is so important. “Films are promoted heavily through every possible medium, reaching every possible person, down to the smallest village. But you end up releasing in only a few centres. So you create a hunger but don’t give the food to everyone. It is a matter of supply and demand. If the producers don’t feed it, the pirates will.”

Kashyap points out that it is time the film industry learned from the global music industry, which adapted to doing business through multiple delivery platforms, such as direct streaming to portable devices. This means addressing the demand for movies beyond movie halls, through video on demand on cable and DTH platforms. Although infrastructure is still lagging, efforts are being made to make money from the legal streaming of Indian movies. BigFlix, India’s answer to U.S. giant Netflix, is battling poor infrastructure as well as piracy. Users who are willing to pay to get legal content instead of downloading illegal versions are frustrated by the poor bandwidth and slow download speeds. BigFlix has just 20,000 or so subscribers, but that should change when 4G LTE networks are launched early next year, says Bigflix CEO Manish Agarwal.

THE FIGHT AGAINST piracy cannot be won with one raid, or by capturing the crime bosses. It’s an ongoing war, and now that it’s online, has copyright holders in an ideological tussle against a growing community that believes that everything on the Internet is (or should be) free. It’s not just urban, tech-aware people. It is also those who may never use the Internet, but who have access to cheap devices such as large-screen mobile phones or tablets. They can’t afford expensive movie tickets, but want the entertainment. They are the ones who buy dubious DVDs from street vendors; they also buy cheap chips from enterprising cyber-cafe owners who load them with movies in formats that can be viewed on phones.

Madan Mariappan, a 19-year-old school dropout who works as a cleaner in a private school in Chennai, has a Spice smartphone that he bought for Rs 5,000. He and his friends exchange movies that they buy from a cyber-cafe operator for Rs 10 each. Tell Mariappan that what he’s doing is against the law, and he laughs. “What can they do?” he asks. “Can they stop all the people from watching movies?”

The law may be clearly on the side of the copyright holders, but Mariappan is right. Ameet Datta, a lawyer specialising in intellectual property at Delhi-based law firm Saikrishna & Associates, says the copyright protection law is quite strong in India, as is the punishment for those breaking the law: up to three years in jail and/or a fine of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh for first-time offenders, and for the second offence prison terms of up to 10 years and/or a fine of Rs 2 lakh. The problem, he says, is in the enforcement. Intellectual property fights, says Datta, are seen as “luxury litigation” by cops who don’t understand the implications of copyright violation.

In early September, the Kerala police registered cases against 1,010 people for illegally sharing the Malayalam movie Bachelor Party online. Its producers hired Jadootech, which provided the police with the IP addresses (Internet Protocol, or the unique set of numbers that identifies each networking device that uses the Internet) of all those who uploaded or downloaded the movie.

The business of tracking IP addresses is itself contentious. Datta says it is fair for a copyright owner to track IP, “because the act of downloading that file is replacing the owner’s market”. Lawrence Liang, an IP lawyer with the Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore who is interested in the politics of copyright, disagrees. “The right to privacy is a fundamental right and that is more compelling than the right to copyright,” he says.

Getting the details that correspond to that IP address is an even murkier topic. It’s easy to track the ISP and the region associated with an IP, but only the ISP has details of the name and actual address of the person. In India, ISPs are required to give this information if any police officer above the rank of sub-inspector requests it. The possibilities of these details being misused are immense. Liang says that if IPs are tracked, it should be made mandatory to get a court order before details are handed over. We asked spokespersons of the major ISPs about the perceived invasion of privacy; asking to remain unnamed, they all say it is unlikely that sensitive data will be handed over without a compelling case made by law enforcement authorities.

In the U.S., a court order is needed before the ISP hands over such details to enforcement agencies. Voltage Pictures, the producers of the 2010 Oscar winner The Hurt Locker, got a court order to go after some 24,000 people who had illegally downloaded the movie. About a year into the case, Voltage dismissed all but 5,000 names on its original list. The problem is that Voltage, like the Bachelor Party producers, relied almost exclusively on the IP addresses. The problems pointed out to Voltage by irate users included subscribers who did not protect home wireless networks, which meant anyone in a certain radius could use the same IP, or those who used public Wi-Fi hotspots. These problems are universal; any fight against online copyright violation can use IP tracking only as a tool.

The other problem is the reach of legislation. The porous and global nature of the Internet means that sites such as The Pirate Bay or RapidShare link to (or host) pirated versions of Indian movies. That’s quicksand as far as the law goes. As long as the host is governed by Indian law, it is possible for the copyright holder to fight under the provisions of the Information Technology Act or the Copyright Act (an amendment to this is being discussed in the Rajya Sabha even now). The World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement provides protection to intellectual property in the case of international copyright violation; this covers cases against sites registered in other countries. There’s also the 185-member World Intellectual Property Organization under the United Nations; WIPO treaties form the basis of several stringent laws on international copyright violation, including the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Online copyright enforcement companies such as Bangalore-based Aiplex and Mumbai-based Republique Media function within this legal framework. Actors Riteish Deshmukh and Ashish Chowdhry set up Republique as a subsidiary of Geodesic (a Mumbai-based software company) to fight online piracy. The company has 2,000 servers around the world and tieups with tech companies for software that scans for and helps take down illegal content.

Another tool that Republique uses is spoofing. To coincide with a movie launch, it floods file-sharing sites with fake files of roughly the size of a full-length movie with authentic sounding file names. The idea is to frustrate users; few have the patience, to say nothing of bandwidth, to download multiple torrents to check if even one is the actual movie.

Aiplex is in the same business, but got into trouble with the Net neutrality community in 2010 for the way in which it worked. The company had been hired by some Mumbai-based studios to take down illegal copies of their movies, such as Peepli Live and Anjaana Anjaani. Aiplex tracked the sites and sent them takedown notices. Soon after, in an interview to an Australian newspaper in September 2010, Girish Kumar, owner of Aiplex, said that if sites did not take down the illegal versions of the movies, Aiplex would “flood [the sites] with millions and millions of requests and put it down.” This distributed denial of service—or DDoS—is the kind of brute attack favoured by the hacker community.

Aiplex’s announcement that it would use DDoS if its notices were not complied with co-incided with the U.S. recording industry, and the MPAA, representing the movie industry, issuing takedown notices to file-sharing sites. Anonymous launched OpPayback, targeting the MPAA and others. The hacker group also took down the Aiplex site for the DDoS threat.

When asked about this incident, Kumar says Aiplex took “completely legal” action, but refuses to say anything more.

Battling the numerous arms of online piracy could end is a Sisyphean task. But the bigger, and more important fight, is to change the mindset of the average person, who wants to share movies with his network of friends, just as he shares holiday photographs. This is not a person who will walk into a store and steal a DVD. But he believes he’s perfectly within his rights to buy a Rs 30 DVD from a pavement seller or download a torrent of a new release on the day of the release, and movies become just another free resource.