"I’d rather go buy DVDs at National Market and watch movies at home than shell out 200-250 buck to watch a movie", I told a friend this morning… and immediately, I had to hear a lecture about piracy and how it hurts the industry, the actors, etc. Of late, there’re hundreds of people trying to curb piracy… but of course, there’re many more media to do the needful… internet being one and then the low cost of production of DVDs being the other… Though they want to curb piracy, have the powers that be ever looked at why piracy is rampant??? Has there been any root-cause analysis?? I talk from the view point of the place where I live, Bangalore. If one just takes a look at the rates of the movie tickets in the city, they’d know the cause behind the rampant piracy in the city. 200 bucks to watch a movie is atrocious. IMax in Hyderabad is around 150 bucks… a normal movie at a multiplex in Hyderabad is not more than 80 bucks at any given point of time. Now, dont go around blaming the high paying ‘IT’ crowd for this. What will the IT crowd, who get two days in a week to watch movies do? they’ll go watch a movie irrespective of the cost because that’s two days they’d get to watch a movie and relax. The blame lies with the authorities… for giving into the local film industry’s demands to levy exorbitant tax on non-kannada movies and nil tax on kannada movies. First of all, if quality movies were made in Kannada, why would there be no takers to watch them? We have lots of local movie industries… Telugu, Tamil, Malyalam, Bengali, etc., who also face stiff competition from other Hollywood and Bollywood… but do they increase tax on other language movies in their state?? NO! That is because they strive hard and make quality movies in their own language that draws people to come and watch them. Citizens should not be forced to watch a movie and neither will anybody watch a movie because tickets to watch it are cheaper than to watch other language ones… come on, do they think that we have pudding for brains?!?!? Now, the second root cause… the cost of buying an original DVD of a movie. When the cost of a DVD player starts at around 1.5k (of course for a chinese make but nonetheless, a DVD player), how can they price the DVDs at 600-700 bucks apiece?? How can the common man pay that amount to buy the DVD of a single movie?? Barring a few movies from certain manufacturers, most of the DVDs are exorbitantly priced which we’re not ready to pay for and consequently, i’ll do the next best thing, buy pirated DVDs which is light enough on my wallet, and also, the latest movies are available. Finally, people talk about quality of the movies… well, a one time investment in a good Home Theater System takes care of that 🙂
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