The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and a group of film studios in India will team up to compete against wide-scale piracy by Indian computer users.
The Indian "Bollywood" film industry is becoming even more concerned that rampant piracy in the country may cost the country's industry millions for years to come. A report issued by the U.S. India Business Council along with Ernst & Young reports the film industry India lost 571,000 jobs and $959 million in revenue in 2008.
"This is a country of one billion people who love movies more than anywhere else," said Dan Glickman, head of the MPAA, in an interview with the AP. "We'd be foolish not to want to come into this market."
Indian movie makers have teamed up with the MPAA in the past, which has led to "Slumdog Millionaire" and "My Name is Khan" becoming successful outside of India.
The MPAA and numerous other movie copyright groups have estimated a high amount of lost revenue, though some people shrug off the validity of their extremely high estimates. Trade groups and governments are cracking down on piracy on an increased level, with legal threats, lawsuits, fines and jail time becoming more and more common for copyright violators.
I continue to believe the movie industries need to work with file sharers to find a new way to distribute movies on more than one platform -- DVD and Blu-ray releases are good, but digital copies for PCs, notebooks and mobile phones are necessary.
