Movie experience was really rich back in Nepal. I didn’t need to wait for an hour to download the movies from torrent sites or visit theatres for new movies. For half a dollar (forty rupees), I could browse DVDs among popular movies and could add them to my movie library along with the better movie watching experience. Of course, you know what I am talking about, all those illegal copies of the movie CDs and DVDs (if possible some blue ray or HD these days) that are available in Nepali Market. The only DVDs I need to pay a bit higher prize were of Nepali Movies and Music albums of which illegal copies were hardly offered fearing the existing laws and regulations. With respect to that scenario of digital products market, I assumed Nepali laws were just made for Nepali products or were just able to handle as little market as that.
With a recent incident though, I doubt my assumption. The news of, operators of CyberSansar, largest modelling agency of Nepal being arrested surprised me. The surprise lies in that, the operators were arrested in relation with the copyright infringement. With their internet portal, GivemeHD.com they were selling several English movies without owning any distribution rights. The business was ongoing under the banner of private company namely Dreams and Ideas, which also owns Cybersansar and Enasha. The two brothers, Abhinav Kasaju and Dipankar Kasaju behind the company were responsible for the act. The way it worked was like, they had a membership site on which users paid an amount to get a membership and in according to the amount, they were delivered the movies. Pretty much of a good concept, had everything would have been legal.
The first time I followed their advertisement on Cybersansar to their illegal movie site, I was really impressed with the website. “Wow what a site and that for Nepal!” was kindda my remark. Hardly had I known it was illegal then. But after I learnt about the membership process and the movies they were going to deliver, somewhere I started being suspicious. First with the gallery of movies they had, blockbusters like Avatar and many more. How come just for some couple of hundred dollars, you give anyone hundreds of movies? And worst even, it was not an online viewing or system like Netflix; they transferred it to hard drives and other storage devices of customers!
Frankly speaking in a country like ours, where hundreds of shops are making business out of the same way, the website didn’t surprise me. It was just one step further of taking the business online. And with their established fame of Cybersansar, they made the site easily popular by advertising on its pages. Our Nepali digital market that specially includes Newroad, Putalisadak and other popular Malls has a lot of stalls that do the illegal movie copying and selling business. These type businesses are growing popular day by day and I hardly know of any government act incidents on them. So, in a way for an online company like Dreams and Ideas, it was just an innovative thought of taking the whole process online and bringing the market in their hands. Who knew if they were even behind the real stalls of supplying movies to these shops before?
Be it late, the good thing still is that the law got over them. As I came up with this post, with regard to the news reported by Nagrik News, I believe Media should have played an essential role in this step. See the Video footage from a hidden camera recorded by Nagriknews at givemehd.com premises, where Abhinav Kasaju talks about GivemeHd with customers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOj0cIW6cHc
For Cybersansar People; A brilliant concept, I must say. But one thing I don’t understand is why should they have done it illegally? I know English movies would cost a lot. So, leave those English movies. You People could have gone for Nepali movies, bought rights for distribution and started off your business. This would have been fair and benefitted everyone. They could have created a successful niche market alongside promoting the Nepali movies market. After all, they don’t provide Angelina Jolie wallpapers on your cybersansar.com portal, do they? CyberSansar has made a successful market only with the Nepali models. So why shouldn’t it have been with Nepali Movies? And one tagline before I end for them (Cybersansar); Say Good bye to copyright infringement, here comes Nepali Law.