Mumbai: Alliance Against Copyright Theft (AACT), the recently formed coalition by Hollywood and Hindi studios to curb film piracy in India along with Mumbai Police, has successfully seized close to 50,000 pirated discs in July 2010.
A positive sign for AACT over the past month has been that a large number of raids have been conducted based on complaints received on its toll free number. The coalition has received 600 plus calls from all parts of Mumbai, allowing the enforcement agencies and Mumbai Police to increase the magnitude of raids. In fact, AACT received over 100 calls on the first couple of days itself when the toll free number – 1800-103-1919 – was launched.
Pirated discs of movies like Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, Khatta Meetha , Udaan, Rajneeti, I Hate Luv Storys along with those of Housefull, Raavan, Milenge Milenge, Lamhaa, Krantiveer, Kites, and several newly released Hollywood movies were seized over the past month. Based on intelligence reports, the enforcement agencies have been regular conducting raids at places like Andheri, Santacruz, Kandivali, Kurla, etc. Now, due to the complaints on the toll free number, the team has been also able to identify single vendors/sellers across the city, which was so far not easy to identify.
Along with responding immediately to calls on the toll free number, the anti-piracy team also initiated a drive with a BMC squad last month. The team, along with a BMC van, conducted raids on sellers of pirated discs between Bandra and Andheri to cover multiple stalls in one day. As per a report by the US think tank – RAND – the proceeds from piracy are used to fund terrorism across the world, including India.
Speaking on behalf of AACT Vice President-Operations UTV Motion Pictures Prakash Nathan said, “We are pleased with the proactive approach displayed by the people in calling AACT to report instances of piracy. The participation is helping AACT further its reach to restrain piracy.”
Committed to curbing piracy across the country, AACT has been taking various measures over the past few months to fight against movie pirates. AACT had launched a comic book titled ‘Escape from Terror Byte City’ to reach out to teens across the country and educate them about the detrimental effects of downloading pirated movies from online sources.
