Hyderabad: The Telangana government has directed Internet service providers to block websites that resort to online movie piracy and has vowed to come out with a policy to check the menace.
IT minister K.T. Rama Rao on Wednesday held a joint meeting with police officials, Internet service providers and representatives of the Telugu film industry to discuss the measures needed to be taken to check the piracy menace. Officials asked Internet service providers to block these websites.
Though the service providers agreed to block the websites, they sought clear-cut norms and directions from the state government in this regard stating that in the absence of these it may not be possible to check piracy effectively.
In the meeting, film producers complained to the government about the huge financial losses they were suffering on account of piracy.
They brought to the notice of police officials and the government that the Telugu film industry had lost over '350 crore in the last nine months due to online movie piracy of several big films like Baahubali, Srimanthudu etc.
Mr Rama Rao said the TS government would bring out a new policy to check piracy and would soon send a team of IT officials to other states to study the policies being adopted there to check online movie piracy.
Noted film producer D. Suresh Babu told the meeting that there were about 200 Internet websites mainly involved in online movie piracy and they need to be blocked.
He reminded that some European countries were effectively tackling this menace with their anti-piracy policies, which needed to be adopted here.
He added that the Telugu film industry was the second largest after Bollywood in the country in terms of producing the highest number of films every year and it was suffering huge losses on account of piracy. He said piracy affected not only film producers but also thousands of others who were dependent on the film industry for their livelihood.
Mr Rama Rao said the government took a serious view of the piracy issue and promised to take all measures to save the film industry from this menace.
