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Pirates of the Bollywean
Bollywood, the Indian movie
industry, is on a campaign against the piracy of their movies.
Who all are the culprits? Find and get surprised!

Pirates
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India like all developing nation is
a heaven for piracy. Weather it is software for the
PC or the Mac, or mp3 songs CD of all the release for
the month. They are all available for sale for Rs 25/-
(USD 0.5) in the corner shop of any major market. DVDs,
CDs, games you name it you get it.
In India one of the prime affected
industry is the Indian cinema Industry, which churns
out the highest number of movies per year worldwide.
A major portion of this industry is the Hindi cinema
industry. This industry based in Mumbai (Bombay) which
is affectionately called the Bollywood. Whether it is
the music or the movie itself, all get pirated and available
on the streets, or online on umpteen number of web sites,
or through P2P software like Kaaza, eDonkey or others.
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Movies which are released in India generally
get pirated in the same week (over the weekend) as the release
of the movie. The so called Hall Prints are available for
sale on the streets and CD vendors by Sunday or Monday through
out the country. Even the local CD rentals make those CDs
available in the same week. Though these prints are horrible
and sound track pathetic, then also the public does not mind
as it saves then at least Rs 60/- to 125/- per person if they
went for the nearest multiplex. That comes out to be around
Rs 250/- for the complete family.
But the irony of the story does not begin
here. The very movie that are pirated on the streets are many
times a piracy itself! Now that is the twist that is the most
surprising. The fact is that the movies that are churned out
by this industry is itself pirated by varying degree from
other cinemas of the world. The major cinema at loss is the
Hollywood, but that is not the end. Language or country is
not a barrier in piracy. If a movie is good then the directors/producers
do not think twice before ripping it off and packaging it
in a different container for the Indian audiences.
The level of piracy varies from movie to
movie. Some of the movies are scene-to-scene and dialog-to-dialog
copy, others are just plot rip offs or story rip offs. Some
go and do a mix-and-match by copying number of different movies
to provide a soup to the audience. Some just copy a scenes
or a sequence and append them in their movies. Songs are another
major piracy hot spot and pages can be written about it.
It is also not that the movies are getting
pirated in the recent years. Its a fact that even the old
timers used to pirate the movies. I remember this classic
example of piracy. In one of the Devanand's major movie a
small sequence of villain den was ripped off as it is from
one of the James Bond's movie. It was I think only 2 seconds
of the movie that was ripped off, but is utterly disgusting.
For copying the entire movie, take the example of 1980's The
Burning Train starring the biggies of that era like Dharmender,
Vinod Khanna and Jitendar. This movie was a copy of a Japanese
movie Shinkansen Daibakuha which was released in 1975.
Recent victims of this Bollywood's Piracy
(hence Bollywean) are Korean movie Oldboy (Zinda), English
movie Man on Fire (Ek Ajnabee). The list goes on. Most commercial
movie that are made has some element ripped from the other
cinemas of the world.
It is also true that now days the awareness
of this piracy is increasing day by day. In reviews of the
movie the reviewer mentions the movie from which it is ripped
off. Internet has many posts in discussion forums which discuss
this piracy. Dedicated sites are present that record and keep
track of the piracy in movies churned out by the Bollywood.
I sincerely hope that such spread of knowledge
will curb the piracy and will ultimately make these Pirate
of the Bollywean also extinct like the other pirates of the
seas. For this information I have maintained the site http://www.akhilesh.in/life/india/bollywoodinspirations.php
where such pirated movies are reviewed and rated on the piracy
level.
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