While I may not be able to comment on movie piracy at all levels in various languages, I can surely suggest some easy and better steps to prevent piracy as much as possible for Telugu movies. I have no connections with film business and just a movie buff who enjoys watching movies thoroughly.
First of all, PIRACY is Bad. Period. Having said that, it is not going away with just few words of "Say NO to piracy" on various occasions by film folks. Lets accept it first, and then we can look for solutions.
There are two kinds of piracy. Piracy by people who makes it as a source of earning money, and other who does it because of limited alternatives. Let me explain little better.
1) A person who made a business out of piracy is not going to stop with any one saying few words. Legal action is the only way.
However, if not this guy, there will be another guy coming up to replace him. So, it is better to look for other alternatives while stopping these kind of guys legally.
2) Real people who watch the movie in pirated form: Various reasons why people watch movies in pirated form even though they know it is not correct. This is the segment I want to focus on in my blog now.
Folks watch pirated movies for various reasons. If we can identify and address, we can reduce piracy significantly while we may not be able to curb it entirely.
* Cost
This is the primary reason why folks tend to watch movies in pirated form. Imagine a movie released in Serra Theaters in Milpitas with a cost of $15/person. For a family with one kid it amounts to $45. Add few snacks and it goes up to $70/movie. So, if it is two kids, it is $100. Too expensive.
Solution: Reduce the movie ticket price to a reasonable $8/person as in previous days. If possible reduce it further
Viability: Say for example, ticket price of "Chintakayala Ravi" was $5/person. Lot more folks would have gone to theater as it is much lesser amount. So, distrbutor would have recouped his money by the head count than ticket price. BTW, that was one of the movie which got released very quick into pirate world based on what I hear. All that is loss of revenue as well as pirated stuff going all around and making others also to not go to theater.
* Convenience
It is true that some times it is not possible to go to theater for what ever reasons we have. So, folks tend to grab some thing that is available as pirate and watch it at their convenience.
Solution: I request film producers to start an entirely new market "Online" at a reasonable cost. This applies to the folks who are tech savvy
Viability: Prasthanam was made available online officially for a small cost. That is a very good initiative. Make sure this becomes a practice for all the movies. This will surely get additional revenue to the producer as well as stop folks from watching pirated low quality stuff.
* VCDs in India
Non-Tech folks watch movies by purchasing VCDs that are available on the street corners.
Solution: Release DVDs early on, may be in a week and make sure the DVD rights are sold at higher price. This will help folks to watch better quality movies and they will prefer to wait few days to watch better than to watch low quality pirated one.
Viability: Yes, this poses threat to theater revenue. Compensate that in DVD revenue instead and producer is safe which ever way it is.
* Collaboration
This should come from producers. Every time a producers movie is released, only he/she is raising voice against it. Not much actions happens after that or prior to that. This is simply because the producer feels pinched exactly at that time. Remaining time, it is not his problem.
Please work with every one, mainly with distributors to reduce the ticket rates, educating the public and make it accessable to every one.
Solution: Spend less to make a good movie, and sell it for low price to distributors. This will allow possibility of lower ticket prices there by lower piracy
Viability: There will be no immediate results from this collaboration, but with time, this can indeed be achieved.
* Other
No matter what you do, there will still be piracy. More it is delayed from movie release time, better it is for every one.
I am sure you have some ideas as well. Please post it and make the industry come together to achieve this. Just because there is piracy, you cannot just like that enter into that store and bash him up (Mahesh Babu's episode) either. So, please make movies more accessible to public and piracy will automatically come under control.
Good Luck to the entire Telugu Film Industry.
