Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Bollywood Embraces Kazaa Movie Downloads

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the and-they-make-such-cute-movies dept.

MaximusTheGreat writes "While Hollywood tries to debate how to tackle P2P movie downloads, Bollywood the world's largest film industry has decided to embrace it. This could usher in a new era of legal movie downloads like iTunes for music, as Bollywood, the Indian film industry produces 1000 movies a year and outstrips hollywood by almost 3:1. Theaters worldwide sold some 3.6 billion tickets to Bollywood films last year, compared with Hollywood's 2.6 billion. In revenue terms Bollywood is already larger than the British, Hong Kong, Japanese and Italian movie industry and is growing at a very fast rate."

2 of 522 comments (clear)

  1. This won't work by andy1307 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    AS any ethnic Indian living in the US will tell you, you can walk into an Indian grocery store and rent a pirated video cassette for the latest Bollywood flock for 2$ or less. This way, people can watch the movie on their big screen TVs instead of waiting for the movie to download and then watching it on your computer.

    I'm not saying this is a bad idea...I'm just saying it won't work with Bollywood movies.

  2. Finally someone understands by mr_lithic · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The main driver behind P2P downloading is not price. It is availability.

    Here is a thriving industry (The Indian and Pakistani film groups) offering their goods online to make them available to those who live in geographical areas that would not normally be accessible. It eliminates videotape piracy which is rampant in this marketplace and allows fans access to the content. Why have the Bollywood chiefs picked this up and the American and British Music Industry dropped the ball. Was it pressure from their distributors? Lack of knowledge of the internet? No method of micropayments?

    I would really like to know why it took a hardware manufacturer to bring in a system of legal digital content delivery (Apple and iTunes).

    It also is good to see one of the largest and most productive media producers embracing digital video distribution. This completely jumps the gun on Hollywood and leaves the North American producers playing catch-up.