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.

Filed Under: india, infringement, movies, upload, youtube
Companies: saregama movies