A roundtable on piracy and its impact on film industry was organized on 30th July by the Centre For Intellectual Property and Technology Law (CIPTEL), belonging to O.P.Jindal Global University. The main speakers invited for the roundtable included actor Suriya, producer K.E.Gnanavel Raja, director of 2D Entertainment, Rajashekar Pandiyan, producer and founder of BOFTA film institute Dhananjayan among other film and television fraternity members.
“We discussed on both short term and long term strategies to curb piracy. Though it cannot be completely removed, it can be brought under control is the game plan. Suriya sir's speech outlines what needs to be done.” Said Mr.Dhananjayan, one of the main speakers talking about the main agenda of the meeting.
Talking on the topic “What does copyright mean to an artist?” Suriya enlisted statistics relating to the revenues of the Tamil film industry and that made through piracy in the year 2009 and in 2016 comparatively. As stated by him, in 2009, the size of the Indian film industry was Rs.89830 cr, and that of the piracy industry was Rs.5300 cr. Shockingly, the statistics for the year 2015 places the size of the film industry at Rs.13820 cr and that of the piracy industries at Rs.18000cr.
Suriya also highlighted the effect of piracy on a movie as huge as Kabali. He stated that according to sources the movie was viewed by more than one million people in just 3 days through illegal sites and more than 2.5 million pirated DVDs were made from it as per sources.
The action plans and preventive measures summed up in the conference will soon be announced through a press release, said the members of the panel.
