Everyone loves to download films, why not make it legal?
Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav likes PK. We know it because he told a newspaper that he "downloaded" the film "last night" and watched it. Uh ho! How can you download the film when it is still playing in the halls?
The better word here is Yadav "pirated" the film. And that is, well, illegal. It is illegal when we, mere mortals, pirate stuff from sites such as PirateBay. And it is illegal when a state CM does it, too.
But let's cut Yadav some slack. And before you gleefully mock him by retweeting a tweet or liking a Facebook post on this matter, think about this - how many times have you downloaded a movie or a song from the web?
Is there anyone out there with a computer who has never downloaded a piece of copyrighted material from the web? PK became available on torrent sites around ten days ago. And so far it has been downloaded probably a million times. Yadav is not the only one in India to pirate it, and that is assuming he pirated it and not downloaded it from a special server set for him by Aamir Khan and Rajkumar Hirani.
Ok, ignore the special server part. If he downloaded it, he probably pirated it. But it is not exactly a big deal. It is something everyone does.
The key takeaway from this here is that downloading a film (or song or TV show) is so convenient and has become such a second nature to us web users that even state CMs don't even think it is illegal. And this is something film and music producers have to think about.
Yadav can definitely afford to watch PK in a cinema hall. Hell, he can easily pay a cinema hall to run a special screening of PK for him. Or he can ask a special screening of the film at his home. Or he can ring up Hirani and request a special copy of the film and Hirani will most likely be more than happy to provide him with one. But he didn't do any of it. He downloaded the film from the web. Why? Because it is convenient. It is also probably the easiest way for a really busy person to watch a film.
Yes, a lot of people download stuff from the web illegally because they don't know any better, or may be they can't afford it. But a lot of web users, possibly the majority, of web users do it because it is convenient and the best way to watch a film.
A lot of people in India pirate Hollywood films because that is the only way to watch them early. The other option is to wait for the film to come to India, which in many cases happens months after the global release, and is anyway heavily censored.
Downloading stuff from the web has become so ingrained in the way we consume content that it is time to make it legal. When it comes to music, it has almost become legal. Even hardcore pirates swear by the ease and convenience of buying music from virtual stores like iTunes. The same needs to happen for movies.
It is also time film producers start thinking about doing a web release along with the cinema release of a film. Give people an option to watch the film the way they want to do at a reasonable price, and while that won't make all pirates go away, millions of existing "criminals" who download movies from torrent sites will stop being criminals.