Hollywood and Bollywood Form Alliance to Fight Piracy
Photo: AP
From left, Bollywood actors Arjun Rampal, Kangana Ranaut, Priyanka Chopra and Marathi actor Upendra Limaye, seen, during the National Film awards, in New Delhi, 19 Mar 2010
Piracy has long been a problem in India, where hawkers sell illegally duplicated CDs and DVDs of popular Hindi movies for about $1. Internet piracy is also rampant as increasing broadband speeds allow faster downloads.
The scale is huge. A recent study put the losses of the Indian film industry in 2008 due to infringement of copyright laws at nearly $1 billion.
Now the Motion Picture Association of America and seven Indian companies say they will work together to stamp out piracy in India - one of the world's biggest movie markets.
"That is a very significant step to showing that all players are serious about fighting this problem collectively, everyone realizes, both the Hollywood and Bollywood studios realize this is a collective problem, and now we have to work collectively to solve the biggest challenge that we face together," said Rajiv Dalal, who heads the Motion Picture Association's office in India.
The two industries will work with law enforcement agencies and movie theaters to target camcorder piracy, online piracy and the sale of pirated DVDs. They will also lobby for the creation of more effective laws to tackle copyright infringement.
There has been increasing collaboration between the world's two biggest film industries.
In recent years, Hollywood studios have ventured into the Indian entertainment market to tap business in a country of over a billion people with a voracious appetite for films. They have opened production houses in India, and entered into joint ventures with Indian film companies.
Rajiv Dalal says the two industries are collaborating in several areas.
"There is no longer this divide between Hollywood and the Hindu studios or Hollywood and Bollywood, because we are doing a number of co productions with the Hindi studios, a number of joint television ventures, so pretty much if the market rises we all rise, if the market falls, we all fall," he said.
A recent example of collaboration between the two film industries is the hit Hindi film, "My Name is Khan". It was produced by two Indian companies, and distributed by Fox Studios in India and the United States.
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