Tamil Rockers Admin – Story Of The Largest Piracy Torrents Syndicate Of South India - Part -1

 JOURNEY BEGINS HERE....

Every six hours 6780 Movies are ripped and uploaded in Torrent sites within the IP Addresses basing in India. The most used torrent sites by Netizens within the country are Mononova, ThePirateBay, KickAssTorrents and ISOHunt. India is only behind the US in accessing these websites and downloading material from them. However, India has the largest user base for a widely known Torrent aggregator website called Torrentz. Within all these websites, there is, however, one website which in the past 8 years, done a traffic attraction of more than any other website based out of India. The site in question was started in a shed in Nungambakkam and was initially named simply as MoviesFreeTo. Within 3 weeks the name was changed to something simple and locally relevant to remember. Tamil Rockers. This article is the story of Tamil Rockers, and takes a neutral dive in, into the world of Piracy in terms of Online Piracy, Movie Business and the mechanism involved, and Social Media propagation. After months of requesting and communicating, we finally got in contact with Bhaskar Kumar, who plays an integral part in the foundation and propagation of Tamil Rockers. Our conversations with him come below, and they are the views of the person involved. Our web platform does not claim to stand by or comment upon the happenings stated within this article.

 CHAPTER 1 - COIMBATORE

The 17-year-old Bhaskar Kumar walks into his small cubicle of a shop. Practically a man-sized wooden box, in the midst of the ten other retail shops, in the bustling bazaar at Saravanmpatty. All the shops are into the business of Digital media works. A fancy little name for DTP and Xerox machines whirring in these cubicle shops all through the day. Students, Job enthusiast flock this bazaar from early in the morning to late in the night, buying sundries in relation to their needs. Highest sales, of course, were course materials from particular colleges, Xerox copies of notebooks of a nerdy topper, or in a recent phenomenon CD’s. While we are on the subject of CD’s, the bazaar in question is infamous for selling practically every software out in the world web market, in the form of ‘cracked’ softwares. Starting from the just launched Windows OS, to Photoshop, to Nero CD Burner, to basically everything. And this is not taking into account the humongous business that the shops started making while selling PC Games. One such outlet for Video Games and Movie CD’s is what Bhaskar Kumar, turns his key into and opens his cardboard of a door for. “Shiny Videos and CD’s” is the name of this humble little establishment, which is locally known as “Corner CD Shop”. Corner because it was situated in the corner of the plethora of digital shops. A little trackback on this establishment, tells us that, Bhaskar a couple of years back flunks his 10^th standard. He is practically hopeless about his future, as even his supplementary exams show him the same result. In desperation comes hope, and in hopelessness comes brilliance sometimes, isn’t it? And so, Bhaskar stumbles upon this idea to start a CD rental shop in the Bazaar.
He opens the shop, and within a few moments a young group of four friends, with their school bags on, appear at the shop. They explore the CD’s collection standing tall in wooden shelves behind Bhaskar, who is just sitting on a stool looking at these young students. They discuss, banter, giggle and finally zero in on “Terminator 3: Rise Of Machines”.
“Rent for 30 per day. Buying 200” Bhaskar says as a matter of factly
“How is the print, Anna? And the movie?”
“Master Print Only. Movie average. Matrix is Better” Bhaskar says, sounding as a master film critic. Every shop owner needs to sound like he knows everything about everything, yes? Also, He knows that in a group, when you put another option, there are chances that they’ll take two, to satisfy anyone and silent any conflict. And as expected the talks start again within the group.
“Matrix Revolutions is good, Anna?” asks someone breaking out from the pitching up discussion.
“Yes. Story-wise it is good. And fights also. Terminator graphics and Arnold is nice” Bhaskar says, knowing very well, that a little more emphasis on the word ‘graphics’ will make them not just rent the CD but buy both of them. One thing he has learnt from his experience of running this shop for the past four months is that the youth visiting him, are suckers for graphics and fights. Those are the keywords.
And thus, the group buys two CDs. And his first sale for the day is a cool 400. Thus, his shop makes good business in the day selling to boys salivating on mindless action, James Bond, Terminators, Graphics, and such. His evenings are more interesting when he gets interacting with Young adults, who come in for some very particular movies, which presumably have some content (read sex scenes and Sharon Stone for most parts). “Shiny Video and CD’s” thrives in the night, when a different stock of movies fills up the lower rack, and a sheet of paper comes out to the table.
Men and Teens aspiring to be Men overnight frequent the shop, and Bhaskar shows them the sheet, filled with details of Porn Movies. And there’s no rental for them, only buying. Each Porn Movie, stored in 2 CD’s pack, is sold for a cool 350 rupees. When Bhaskar runs out of the stock, he makes his weekly trip to Chennai, to buy the stockpiles from his friend, Daniel Raju, at Majestic Circle.

CHAPTER 2 -CHENNAI

The first day is always crucial. It makes or breaks a movie. That much everyone knew. But what very few people knew was a street fact that, it wasn’t the first day that decided the fate of a film. Neither the weekend following. It was the six hours before the release of the film that decided the fate. Producers and Distributors six hours before the first show would indulge in the last bid, to offer slots and extensions. Usually, the whole arrangement would be taken care by mediators, one of them being Daniel Raju, who would collect Paper foldings ‘Chits’ from each distributor in the city, travelling from one corner of the city to the another, in his old Chetak scooter. These Chits would contain the amount, the distributor was willing to spend to acquire the movie for more number of shows beyond the first day. How did he decide how much he wants to spend if at all he does?
It’s a simple logic, the distributors are shown the movie only up to the first half, ten hours before the actual release. The second half is never shown, to protect the secrecy of the plot. Then the producers would go back to their places, and decide on a gamble to invest in the movie beforehand. It was a risky gamble. If the movie clicked, the producer would coolly double his Ask rate. If it flunked, the investment is gone. To ensure that there is a common guarantee between the Producers and the distributors, irrespective of the movie performance and fluctuation, a third neutral unofficial body was formed in the late 70’s called The Brokers. They took care of the bidding procedure, guaranteed Asks, and ensured that everything was proper. In early 90’s cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and other major south Indian cities, had more than 150 broker agencies, each employing more than two hundred people each.
Although the business of movie piracy, facilitated by these brokers over time, is a vast discussion, our narrative requires a small peek into Daniel Raju’s work. Daniel Raju, much like his friend in Coimbatore, was a man of humble academic bearings. But what he did excel was in building contacts. He started being a Broker, interacting with Producers and Distributors directly at the age of fifteen. Thereafter, he started his own Brokering business, by getting really good deals for smaller budget films. He had a knack of getting them two-week slot bookings and had made a name for himself with emerging production houses. By the time he touched twenty, he knew the potential of Movie piracy as a business. And it was a time when Video CD’s were just coming out. Initially, he tied up with Internet Cafes, and low-level computer shops, to copy the Video CD’s being released. Initially, he used to bulk purchase, 1000 Blank CD’s from a shipment of Chinese made, UNA, MoserBaer, Sony, BOST, TARA, ZOLO brands which started dumping them on Chennai Port.
And thus started his parallel business of Piracy as well. He started making friends across the state and supplied them with quality prints of movies which were released on Video CDs. The margin? Well, you see the original Video CD of Kaadhal Kondein (starring Dhanush) of 2003, was priced at Rs.450 initially and sold close to 750 copies. The same was pirated, and priced at Rs.70, and sold close to 62,000 copies reportedly. One Video CD was sufficient to fuel an unlimited number of copies. And one of his friends was Bhaskar of Coimbatore. They were simply making a margin of at least anywhere between 3,000 to 20,000 per movie. And just to give you an idea, an average year, there are around a thousand 1000 Indian movies releasing every year. The issue was Indian movies were very less in the market, for the piracy machinery already in play, within the country. That’s where Chinese, Korean, English and Russian movies filled the gap. Not to mention Porn movies directly brought in by foreign tourists and sold to the Brokers here for a handsome amount.
(We shall explore the topics of Movie Piracy, Porn Influx, And More in our upcoming articles – India in High Definition, coming out soon. Due to constraints of space and discussion, we shall focus on the story of Tamil Rockers within this article. However, the character introductions shall play a crucial part in our future discussions on India’s Piracy Rings in future as well) continues part - 2....

Source :voxspace