Malayalam cinema industry is marred by the pirated copy issue from years and recently also it had made big problems in the industry with related to the censor copy issue of the film Premam. There had been many suggestion came from various angles to kill piracy such as wide release of the films as well as online release of films. Pirated print kills not only the films running in theaters it also washes away the Video CD or DVD industry as well.
When the master disc of a film releases through a popular company the people behind piracy uses that same print and uploads it in sites like torrent. People downloads the film from it and the income that film ought to get through the video CD or DVD business ends there and the film again falls to great loss after the loss from theaters.
By the suggestion of many industry decided to release films online and as a first step of that Rajiv Ravi directorial film Njan Steve Lopez starred by Farhan Fazil and Ahaana Krishna released online. The film was actually released in theaters last year but not well received at the box office. This flick has released online last day and the next day itself its pirated copy appeared in Torrent sites. Directors including Lal Jose has taken the initiative of online releasing. The online releasing was done by in association with popular online releasing partner Reel Monk and they had already filed a complaint in Anti-Piracy cell about the pirated print in Torrent.
This shows the access of piracy is to all levels of cinema and they cannot be controlled by just online release or wide release of a film. We had to take measures hard than that to stop this trend. Two days back a news came that the Lijo Jose Pellissery film Double Barrel is all set to become the first Malayalam film to do online release worldwide in this coming Onam on the same day of its theatrical release as well. But in the light of new developments we can’t much surety about that as well.
