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Bollywood to protest against cable piracy on August 11

Taking a cue from their counterparts in Madras, the Bombay film industry has decided to take the state government to task for its failure to curb cable piracy. All film-related activities will be closed on August 11.

A massive rally will be taken out from Juhu in north-west Bombay to Mantralaya, where a delegation of the film industry will meet Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi and give him a memorandum, urging the government to take immediate and drastic steps against the unchecked menace of cable piracy that is devastating the Rs 10 billion Bombay film industry.

An action committee against cable and other piracy had been set up on July 22, with K D Shorey as convener and G P Shirke as chairman. Various film bodies like the Film Makers Combine, Indian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, Theatre Owners Association and others have united under this banner to fight cable piracy.

"This is a matter of survival for the film industry. We hope that better sense will prevail upon the government and they will put an end to the menace which is eating up a major chunk of our income," said prominent personalities in production, distribution, exhibition and recording sectors. These included Surinder Kapoor, Pahlaj Nihalani, Amit Khanna, Ramesh Taurani, Pappu Verma, U A Thadani, N N Sippy and others, who were present at the first meeting of the action committee on July 25.

Thadani, president, TOA, said audiences have stopped patronising theatres. In Maharashtra, where there were 140 theatres, only 106 are functioning today. Another member said though the government collected millions of rupees as entertainment duty tax, it never invested even part of that money for the welfare of the industry.

Distributor N N Sippy said a day's closure would amount to heavy losses for the industry, but the loss caused by the video sharks was much more. It is estimated that the film industry loses over 60 per cent of its legitimate income due to cable piracy.

Pahlaj Nihalani said one of the major factors which has thrown the film industry into deep crisis is the menace of cable operators screening new releases. He added that it had now assumed alarming proportions, causing irreparable damage to the industry.

Amit Khanna said that, despite the Indian Copyright Act being most stringent, comprehensive and containing one of the best statutes on copyright law in the world, the film industry is facing a do-or-die situation. To combat piracy, the government of India amended the Copyright Act in 1984 and 1994, making piracy a cognisable and non-bailable offence with minimum imprisonment of two years and a fine of Rs 200,000.

Yet, since the law was amended 14 years ago, not a single pirate had been convicted. The film industry's inummerable representations to the government from time to time, pleading for strict compliance of the act, have not yielded any positive results due to the apathetic attitude of the law enforcement agencies in the state, said Nihalani.

Committee members said the common man should help in curb this menace by discouraging the screening of pirated copies. Shirke quoted the example of Major Saab, the illegal screening of which was stopped in one area with the help of a private organisation.

Distributor Shyam Shroff said the future of cinema theatres appears bleak, since all the latest films are shown cable television. Sippy added that the film business would be ruined completely unless drastic action was taken to curb the growing cable piracy. Distributors and producers were left in the lurch by the intense competition among cable operators to screen new releases in order to increase the number of their subscribers. Ram Mohan, of Cine Artistes Association, said everyone from top artistes to spot boys would participate in the rally.

The Tamil film industry had recently organised a mammoth procession of leading film producers, directors, distributors, exhibitors, actors and actresses led by thespian Sivaji Ganesan. After consultations with the industry delegation, Chief Minister M Karunanidhi announced that a separate police cell to check video piracy would be formed in Madras. A person convicted twice for clandestine cable operations or possession of pirated copies would be detained under the Goonda Act.

UNI