Google dotcom may be facing some tough questions from Bollywood entrepreneurs with its newly established video-viewing site. Several popular Hindi movies are on the site to be viewed free of cost. Ken Naz, CEO of Erosentertainment, North America division, spoke to IANS regarding the Google video site offering Hindi movies.
"It's illegal, it is not allowed. It is totally illegal. There are laws, which we'll be going after.... I think there should be more write-ups about it."
Hindi films like "Bunty Aur Babli", "Paheli", "Neal 'N' Nikki", "Ek Khilari Ek Hasina" are all on the website
IANS went to the Google website and viewed some of these freely available videos that included movies like "Neal 'N' Nikki" and "Swades", all fairly recent releases. IANS contacted Google by phone as well e-mail but did not receive any response.
Indian American entrepreneurs related to Bollywood are fuming over what they allege is an infringement of the copyright of moviemakers similar to the famous case of Napster which lost a battle in court against the American music industry when it allowed its software to be used for free music downloads from the Web and sharing of materials.
"Google Video allows users to upload, store and distribute videos for free or for a fee," Sunil Thakur, founder of WahIndia!, a website that syndicates its entertainment segments online to sites like Sify and Planetguru and has been in existence for two and a half years now.
"This mechanism is now abused heavily by users for Bollywood films, music videos, and directly infringes on original rights holders' property," he said, adding that Google puts the burden of monitoring and policing their video site on the original rights holder.
In communications he had with Google through an associate who works there, Thakur said he received a response in which Google suggest he "contact the user directly", to remove content, or "file a complaint" using standard form to contact Google Video.
Because WahIndia! depends heavily for revenue from legally contracting with Bollywood moviemakers and uses materials from that industry to make its syndicated shows, "We feel the pain, and we know the pain of the industry," Thakur said.
"These users (that Google asks us to contact) are usually untraceable and could be from anywhere in the world.
"While one waits for the issue to resolve, the filmmaker could be losing real money as new releases are downloaded and passed around on PC, iPOD, Sony PSP," Thakur complained.
"It doesn't look like Google has given much consideration to the copyright laws of other countries. I'm sure they have protections in place for Hollywood films, but they don't seem to care about Bollywood," said Vivek Wadhwa, director of Duke University's Engineering Management Program, who has been involved in the making of "Bollywood Bride", an Indian and American co-production.
"Hollywood is well organised and they would pursue Google as aggressively as they did Napster. But Bollywood doesn't have the resources to launch these types of lawsuits. So this creates yet another piracy threat to Bollywood. And now anyone can watch a pirated movie," Wadhwa maintained.
Right now you can download Bollywood films through file sharing networks, subscription websites and Internet Relay Chat (IRC). The latest films are available soon after they are released.
"But all this requires technical skills and this is hard to do," Wadhwa said. "What Google has done is to make this whole process much easier - so that anyone who can use Google can simply search for films or music videos and click to watch them."
Thakur said he was aware that Google had launched its video site more than three months ago to enable individuals to upload their videos for the rest of the world to watch.
But it was only two weeks ago, when a student told him he sees Hindi movies on Google video, that Thakur was alerted. "Then I heard 'Shikhar' was on site full-length and it was only released last week in India. So somebody uploaded it after taking a movie in a theatre," Thakur surmised.
"It upset us because that is part of our business model as well and we are working with some distributors (in Bollywood) so that we can legally use content. All these films are the gems of the recent one year or even a month back," he said.
-- Edited by RJ_Sonia at 14:04, 2006-01-22
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