Former ATS chief, AA Khan, who is running a campaign against piracy through his anti-piracy agency, tells DNA how gangsters have become more sophisticated in their crimes.
“A hawker selling DVDs at a stall on a footpath may seem like an innocent man. But most people have no clue how big a racket this could be. There is a whole chain which links the hawker to the DVD copiers, copiers to the suppliers and suppliers to gangs operating abroad,” says Khan.
Explaining how the process works, he says, “A master DVD could be leaked by any one of the distributors and sent to a third party for duplication. There is a huge return or a percentage profit that his person gets for leaking the DVD. Copies of this master DVD are made on high quality silver DVDs which can be further duplicated a number of times.”
Adds Khan, “Facilities in countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan are capable of duplicating 75,000 silver DVDs at a time. In India it’s not possible to do so because of the law constraints. Then these silver DVSs are smuggled across all major cities in India and transferred to individuals who own stalls and employ hawkers to further duplicate them into cheap quality blue DVDs.”
The cost of duplicating a DVD may not be more than Rs2 or Rs3, but the revenue generated by pirated DVD sales in India is approximately Rs1,000 crore every year.
But Khan believes that India forms a very small fraction of the pirated consumer goods market. Gangs in other countries have been generating enough money through pirated toners, cartridges, software, watches, high-end leather goods and more.
But what is to dissuade the common man from paying Rs100 to watch a movie in the comfort of his own home as compared to Rs250 at a multiplex? Khan believes that piracy can stop if there is integration between the multiplexes, producers, studios and the distributors.
“Presently all these entities have been working independently. They are concerned with their own particular movies. We are doing are duty, but unless they decide to help us by coming together, nothing can change,” says Khan.
