This is a Top 10 list filmmakers may not be happy to know but cannot ignore either, as it stems from unethical film viewing and creates a dent in revenues. Despite the measures taken by the Telugu film industry to curb piracy, the downloading and sharing of pirated copies of movies continue to exist online. Proof to that is the statistics shared with The Hindu by Germany-based tech firm TECXIPIO . The firm has been tracking peer to peer (P2P) downloading and sharing of files since 2012.
The tracking of viewing patterns, according to the spokesperson of TECXIPIO, helps understand the demand for movies in worldwide markets.
Take a look at the top 10 most pirated Telugu films of 2017. The numbers represent the unique file sharers i.e., how many peers shared at least one file of the respective Telugu films in 2017?
Baahubali – The Conclusion : 9.37 million
DJ- Duvvada Jagannadham : 1.7 million.
Arjun Reddy : 1.4 million
Fidaa : 1.15 million.
Khaidi No. 150 : Nearly one million.
Ninnu Kori : 899,978
Nenu Local : 869,978
Lie : 841,974
Nene Raju Nene Mantri : 831,974
Raja The Great : 774,121.
Baahubali’s P2P shares are huge (taking into account that it released in different languages) when compared to Raees , the top most pirated Hindi film of 2017, which stands at 6.2 million shares worldwide.
Baahubali’s co-producer Shobu Yarlagadda admits he isn’t shocked at the huge numbers. “Fighting piracy is not an easy battle and in spite of our efforts, there are leakages. We are continuously fighting this menace with no foolproof method. We can maintain close vigil in the first three to four weeks, the period when the demand for P2P pirated links are the highest,” he says.
TECXIPIO’s spokesperson reveals, “We developed algorithms to map torrent activity to content ID spaces. The ‘Mapped Series and Movies’ section refers to file sharing activity, and we were able to identify the file as a movie or series and match it to an ID in our database.” A database of piracy, the company feels, can provide market insights and help media and entertainment companies analyse how and where the files of movies, television shows and music artists are downloaded worldwide. So far, the company has monitored nearly 150K movie titles worldwide in real-time.
The major regions where the P2P sharing of top 10 Telugu movies were observed, according to data shared by TECXIPIO, are India, followed by the U S, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, UAE and other Middle East countries. In India, the most demand comes from Hyderabad, followed by Bengaluru, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Mumbai. Central and northern India (except New Delhi) do not show much interest in Telugu films.
The tech firm also compared the demand for Telugu, Hindi and Tamil films from January 1, 2018, to March 19, 2018. The results:
* Hindi movies: Nearly 61 million file sharers
*Tamil movies: Nearly 20 million
*Telugu movies: Nearly 16 million
How it worked
* More than 60% of users who shared ‘Baahubali 2’ in India also shared ‘Baahubali - the Beginning.
* The first torrent files of ‘DJ’ surfaced on P2P networks on the day of its release.
* For ‘Fidaa’, the most active shares were from India, the UAE and Sri Lanka (Colombo and Kandy).
* For ‘Ninnu Kori’, the most active sharing in India was from Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru.
* Almost 83% of worldwide ‘Nenu Local’ shares came from India.
* Nearly 38,000 shares of ‘Lie’ came from Russia.
* Every second P2P user who downloaded ‘Nene Raju Nene Mantri’ in Pakistan, has also shared ‘Raees’.
* Nearly 80% of people who downloaded ‘Raja The Great’ in Sri Lanka also downloaded ‘Baahubali - The Conclusion’.
(Source: TECXIPIO)
