29 July 2007

Internet Reservoirs

For the past few years, a couple of websites are providing online music services. The movie songs in most of the major languages (Indian) are available - to listen online.

There (is?) was the website coolgoose even provided the downloadable mp3 versions.

Since the huge growth of band width, there are sites offering video - either parts of movies or even the full length movies. The second wave of music sites are even uprooting the old music sites like raaga/music-india-online.

In case of video-sites, the major ones are videoduniya/videoraaga/videomasti etc. These websites are just a collection of well organised links to the online reservoirs of YouTube and Google-Video (both are actually the same).

This is in fact a very good business. Since I live abroad, I know how much do people want to see Indian movies here. And this kind of websites is a blessing for us - especially in Europe.

Now comes the problem of piracy. Even Sivaji (the latest Rajni movie) is available online. And as far as I know, the real distributors of the movies are not happy about it. Still I am surprised, why don't they act?

All these online sites are providing very low-quality videos. At the same time, if the distributors want, they can setup good servers with good quality video - let it be streaming or even download (which expires after a couple of hours/days). This is what is happening with amazon-video right?. People rent the movies and watch them. (I don't know about the patent/legal issues)

Even if they charge about 3-5 Euros, I am sure there would be quite a lot of people to rent and watch the movies. If you consider the whole of Europe, I am sure you'll get quite a number of people for that.

I would definitely watch 2-3 Indian movies at the cost of 10 Euros a month. I am sure, I am not a movie-freak in this aspect. There are people with LOT of time who would watch at least 8-10 movies every month.

Am I overlooking something? Some legal issues?

Now since Indians are smart, they would download the stuff, record it new, and the sell it off for lower price. In that case, I am sorry.. you cannot help it! Let the online piracy continue!

By the way, I watched Sivaji and liked it. It was fun. I am becoming an ardent fan of Thalaivar ;). [Reciprocating for another post ;) - from a dear friend]

Signing off,
Sands
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PS: From a Malayalam daily (online version) what I could understand is this. The following image is of a health centre in Kerala - How is it?!


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