Bollywood loses $1 billion to piracy in the United States

The movie industry in India is losing about $1 billion to pirated movies in the United States. 

From The Economic Times:

WASHINGTON: Pirates are robbing Bollywood of a billion dollars in revenue annually in the US, says veteran Indian filmmaker Bobby Bedi, lamenting that “the face of the Indian films pirate is Indian”. 
“The home video market in the US is bleeding massively with close to 95 percent of Indian films pirated,” he says. “Go to any Indian store in the US and you’ll see stacks of pirated Indian films,” adds Bedi who has himself seen five varieties of a single film in an Indian store. 

“The same fellows will never sell pirated American products,” Bedi told reporters, regretting that American enforcement agencies were not forceful enough in helping plug losses suffered by the Indian entertainment industry in the US. 

Bedi said the Indian home video market in the US made up 15 percent - about $2 billion - of India’s entertainment industry valued at $13 billion, “which is really huge.” 

“We are losing maybe half of that - one billion dollars per year - through piracy and related activities in the US,” he said at a Capitol Hill event where he apprised US lawmakers of the seriousness of piracy in developing nations. 
India loses a total of $6 billion to counterfeiting and piracy.


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