NEWS

Piracy: Jaan-E-Mann & Don lose Rs 650 mn

BY JOHNNY VAZ · October 30, 2006 · NEWS

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The makers of <i>Jaan-E-Mann</i> and <i>Don</i> have incurred losses to the tune of Rs 650 million due to internet piracy.

MUMBAI: Movie piracy has now become hi-tech. While T-Series, which holds the audio and video rights of Krrish, managed to save Rs 40 million (Rs 4 crores) via anti-piracy raids conducted by T-Series Public Performance License president M M Satish; this time round the scenario has changed.

With the release of Sajid Nadiadwala’s Jaan-E-Mann and Farhan Akhtar’s Don, the distributors of pirated Bollywood DVDs and VCDs have taken the hi-tech route to hoodwink anti-piracy cells. They have stopped smuggling pirated master prints of the movies and are instead downloading them through private coded cyber sites uploaded from Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia.

T-Series holds the audio and video rights of both movies. According to Satish, the makers of Jaan-E-Mann and Don have suffered losses to the tune of Rs 650 million (Rs 65 crore).

“Jaan-E-Mann and Don are the first Bollywood movies to be distributed on the net and has already created ripples in film industry, resulting in a loss of Rs 650 million,” says Satish.

“We have reported this to the cyber crimes cell. Since they are operating from outside India like Malaysia, Nepal and Bangladesh, it’s hard to catch them but soon we will come up with a solution. We have intercepted a few links and codes, which were sent as SMSes to nearly 900 piracy distributors in India, Nepal and Bangladesh by a key dealer who operates a private website from Malaysia. These sites are illegal and have their servers and internet protocol addresses outside India and these pirated movies are uploaded in Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Singapore. In the past four days, distributors of pirated versions have been downloading DVD files of the two films for a mere $3 (Rs 135) and made 10,000 more copies of the film. Within three days, there have been 80,000 downloads of Don and 40,000 of Jaan-E-Mann,” adds Satish.