Hollywood, Bollywood rewrite anti-piracy script
Both industries will work in tandem with movie theatres, police, internet service providers and politicians
Mumbai : Hollywood and Bollywood joined arms on Thursday to fight piracy, with the announcement of a coalition among the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and seven Indian companies to tackle counterfeiting in one of the world's largest film markets.
The alliance comes as Hollywood tries to tap global markets more aggressively and as Indian movie studios grow in size and stature — narrowing the gap between Indian and US filmmakers, who have not always seen eye-to-eye on intellectual property issues.
A year in the making, the coalition to fight film piracy in India will work with movie theatres to crack down on camcorder piracy — the source of 90 per cent of all pirated DVDs — with police to tighten enforcement, with internet service providers to fight internet piracy and with politicians to create more effective laws.
Funding
MPAA, which has similar anti-piracy alliances in the US, Europe and Hong Kong, would not disclose the size of the coalition's budget but said funding would come from members.
The Indian film industry has a rich history of copycat productions and traditionally has had less respect for the sanctity of intellectual property than Hollywood would like.
In 2008, for example, Warner Bros unsuccessfully sued to block the release of an Indian Punjabi film called Hari Puttar — A Comedy of Terrors on the grounds that the name was too close to its Harry Potter series.
That friction has started to ease with the rise of corporate studios in India, like UTV Motion Pictures and Reliance Big Pictures, which last year took a 50 per cent share in Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks for $325 million (Dh1.19 billion).
Over the last two years, a growing number of successful partnerships — like My Name is Khan, produced by two Indian companies and distributed by Fox in India and the US — as well as successful crossover movies — like Slumdog Millionaire and Avatar, which both did well in India — have also strengthened ties.
"People are becoming more of the same mind," Dan Glickman, the outgoing chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, told The Associated Press in an interview.
