Written By: Shahzeb Hussain

Piracy, you just can’t get rid of It. Everyone likes free stuff right? Why pay thousands of rupees for something when you can get it for much, much less. Did you know Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, and Pakistan have some of the biggest piracy rates in the world?

Going into movie shops buying DVDs at steal prices? We don’t think of that when we buy them because we’ve been doing that for years and to us it’s just where we buy movies. Sometimes we’ll have to wait for a good “print,” sometimes we’ll even get it early if we’re lucky.

You can’t even make out what’s on the screen but you’ll still watch it.

I’m sure living in Pakistan, almost everybody who’s bought a DVD must have come across the infamous bootlegged videos, where some guy is recording the entire movie in the theatres with his camcorder. It’s what we call a “bad print.” You know, the fuzzy, blurry quality with people coming in the middle of the screen, the bootlegger’s trying to get a good view of from inside his jacket.

These bootleggers record the movies which they’ve paid to see and since they’ve paid to see it they believe it is their right to share it with the world. A pirate’s best friend is called torrents. I’m sure at least one of your friends must have mentioned that you use torrents instead of buying DVDs, since you get it for free.

So why is that so bad?

Free is good right?

Rs. 50 = less than a dollar

Well, every time you pirate something, the developer/creator/producer/company, loses money. They lose money with every single download someone makes, though that’s just money from the tickets. However, pirates not only pirate new movies in theatres, they also pirate DVDs. Not following me?

Now this is what we call a “master-print” as opposed to a “bad print” that was recorded through some guy’s jacket at the theatres. A “master-print” is data ripped straight from an original DVD of the movie. That data is now shared through torrents for the rest for the world. So what’s a pirate’s justification? If you’ve paid for it it’s yours’ and you can do whatever you want with it. It ain’t stealing, it’s sharing!

Well aren’t pirates a caring bunch? They love to share!

Torrents = Free

So now the companies aren’t just losing out from every ticket at a cinema but also from the DVDs.  Now these companies that lose all that money have less money to make new movies. Yeah it might seem impossible that it affects them, but it does. If a movie doesn’t make back all that they spent, a lot of people don’t get their pay checks.

However it’s not enough to nearly make a difference, because people love free things and in Pakistan this is how we’ve been getting our movies for as longs as DVDs have been around, and why should we pay 10 times over for something we get for less than a hundred rupees?

That’s how we think.

But… What do you think? Do you think piracy has spoilt us? Have you ever downloaded something off of torrents?

Let us know!