India is ranked fourth in the world when it comes to Illegal downloads, behind US, UK and Canada. This is the finding of the survey conducted by Motion Picture Distributors Association (MPDA) in conjunction with Envisional and DtecNet, two global firms engaged in providing software solutions to track and prevent piracy of digital content and online business.
Now, although India is ranked 4th globally, I think, purely from the density of Internet users resorting to illegal piracy, we will be Number 1 by a big margin. Think about it – In India Internet penetration is one of the lowest, coupled with very low bandwidth speeds – Even then we are ranked number 4 in the world. So, with fraction of user base compared to top 3 countries, we still ranked so high.
The report mentioned that online piracy of film and television content in India is mainly through file-sharing networks like BitTorrent and cyberlockers, or web-based file hosts such as RapidShare and Mediafire.
Another interesting finding was that – India had the highest level of film piracy in any English-speaking country.
Just to give you an perspective of illegal downloads – Hindi Movie “Kaminey” was downloaded over 350,000 times on BitTorrent with around two-third of downloaders located in India alone ! Imagine the kind of revenue producers have lost.
Now, this is just online – what about offline piracy, the street vendors who sell pirated CDs and DVDs – I am sure there count must be running in hundreds of thousands as well !
Here is a Fact to think about – According to an Ernst and Young 2008 report on “The Effects of Counterfeiting and Piracy on India’s Entertainment Industry”, the Indian film industry lost $959 million and 571,896 jobs due to piracy.