Tollywood: Minors turn pirates for quick bucks

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Piracy seems to be a nagging issue for the Tollywood. And its latest perpetrators are minors and youngsters who are lured into it with a promise of quick bucks. Earlier, film piracy was an organised crime, but now it is decentralised, where the piracy makers are mostly targeting the student community.

“The offer to the youngsters is that they would get 10 dollars into their bank accounts if they videographed a film on the first day of release and sent it to those involved in piracy,” said A Raj Kumar, representative of Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce and chairman of Anti-Video Piracy Committee.

“The minors and youngsters are getting attracted to the money,” Kumar said, adding, piracy is on the rise in Telugu film industry for the past 16 months.

Kumar said the estimated loss to the Telugu film industry due to piracy is Rs 1,007 crore. Around 215 films were released in the last 16 months.Earlier this week, a high-level meeting was convened at the Telangana Secretariat in Hyderabad to take measures against film piracy. IT, Cyber Crime police, representatives of film industry including Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce president P Kiran, representatives of Motion Pictures and Ministry of Industrial Policy officials were present.

“We have been working from 2014 to curb film piracy under the Telangana Intellectual Property Crime Unit. Earlier, the pirated version of a film was made available online on the first day of its release.

Now, the pirated version is available only three weeks after a film’s release.

The first two weeks of a film is very important for any producer,” said IT principal secretary Jayesh Ranjan.