Indian Studio Uploads Pirated Version Of Its Film To Its Official Youtube Account
from the man,-that-kamal-ddr-sure-makes-a-ton-of-movies dept
I can't imagine what went wrong here. You'd think an official Youtube account for a movie studio wouldn't be lacking in non-infringing content to upload. Nonetheless, India's Saregama Movies somehow ended up with a pirated movie as an official upload. Not only that, but the pirated version had gathered nearly 166,000 views before being taken 'round back and privatized by the studio. Twitter user Last Avenger screencapped the miscue in all its glory.
A search for Kamal DDR will bring up hundreds of listing, all pointing to various torrent links. Kamal DDR apparently "supplied" this copy to Saregama, although exactly how that ended up on the official channel rather than the studio's own un-pirated version remains a mystery.
Returning to the scene of the self-inflicted crime (as it were), viewers are now greeted with the familiar skewed-emoticon-o'-public-embarrassment.
No explanation for this switch-up has been provided by Saregama, so we're left with speculation. Could it be that torrenting the file was easier than finding it on the server? Was this preserved on a Saregama hard drive as evidence and labelled unclearly? Was this a disgruntled employee's last act? Rogue administrator? Are the phone calls truly coming from inside the house, torrentially-speaking? It also appears that this issue may not be limited to this film. Roughly a third of the links on Saregama's Upload list dead end with a "page not found" message.
Maybe original and pirated copies mingled freely within Saregama's local storage, much as they do on the open market. India's struggle with truly rampant piracy (as compared to the non-rampant piracy that is fretted about constantly by lobbyists and ICE heads) has been well documented and yet the country still cranks out roughly 80 million films (estimated) every year.
At the end of the day, Saregama's house is (mostly) back in order. Only the quizzical private-video-face remains, along with a selection of full-length films from the Saregama catalog (many with English subtitles) and a few unanswered questions.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: india, infringement, movies, upload, youtube
Companies: saregama movies
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Since "we're left with speculation", I blame Mike.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
A Matter of Convenience?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
"Is Saregama Kamal DDR?"
Viacom did it. Wouldn't surprise me in the least bit if Saregama did it too.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Great deal
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: A Matter of Convenience?
I'm betting somebody *already had* the pirated copy, so it was just easier to use it instead. ;-P
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Since "we're left with speculation", I blame Mike.
He's fostered a society of pirates that conflates piracy with promotion.
Because it is promotion in some way: http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-of-thrones-director-says-130227/
Also, since we are left with speculation I blame you for the Catholic Church woes with pedophiles. (Was that random and absurd enough?)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: A Matter of Convenience?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: A Matter of Convenience?
You are overestimating the IQs in the entertainment industry.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: A Matter of Convenience?
Duh.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: A Matter of Convenience?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: A Matter of Convenience?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Hard Questions
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Since "we're left with speculation", I blame Mike.
But too bad for you that's light-years beyond your closed minded way of thinking.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This leads to finding the most convenient method which happens to be a torrent. Likely only a quick spot check to verify that the torrent in question was actually the movie was done, and the watermark can be fairly easy to miss (assuming it's not present for the entire feature length, i haven't checked).
Mostly this is just embarassing for them.
It should at a minimum though highlight how convenient the whole process is. More likely those higher ups will never get past the embarassment of the situation and it will take the industry Longer to go from production to release than it did before (is that even possible?)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: A Matter of Convenience?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Subtitles
That may be what happened here. Someone wanted to put subtitles on the video and just googled for them and used one that showed up.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Goddamn it I love the way they think it's more backwards than Alabama and that's pretty fucking backwards if you ask me.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That's what we said yesterday
I pointed out that the linked article from the linked article raised a point about the digitization of movies. Well, the guys this article is about did it better. Just get what people are actually using, and treat that as good enough.
"But wait!", some guy might say. "What about the HAL is IBM clue in 2001 and shit? We couldn't have ever seen that if we had thrown out the original film before we got HD tech!"
Yeah, I wanted to address that yesterday, but was too stoned to formulate it correctly. Maybe it'll be better today, I'm since I'm stoned and also drunk all at once.
The fact of the matter is that Stanley managed to keep those films until we could digitize them in HD that was good enough to read that clue about author intent. Maybe they had been digitized well enough for HD at the time they were mass-marketed on DVD, that doesn't matter: what does matter, is, the original film was preserved well enough to deliver that clue to good-enough consumer displays. Finally, for film, you can always devise a tech that will scan them more precisely, but there will be some time when the next tech will only record the degradation since the last digitization.
At that point, we'll have lost our physical connection to the movies on film. And the movies on digital will be, by that time, so accurate and precise, that current digital HD cameras will be considered blurry as shit. We'll have lost all the pixels that could have been recorded in the first-shot digital films, if they had had equipment that did not exit at that time.
Does that matter all that much? Somewhat. Sometimes, author intent is conveyed in very small details, like the two times IBM appears from HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey. It's important to keep. But then, digital cameras mean that directors have to capture their intent within the physically captured pixel bitmaps, else it's lost forever. This is a good thing.
Because a limited format means that artist have to express their whole intent within the limitations of that format. It does at least give us a response to those who say that perpetual copyright is necessary to preserve original cultural artifacts forever for future re-scanning.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Since "we're left with speculation", I blame Mike.
That pretty much sums every comment you ever made, blue.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]