Thursday, January 05, 2006

Hindi Movies on Google Video

Off late have been noticing lots of Hindi movies have appeared on Google Video. Some of them are new Hindi movies and some are old hits. Not sure if the production houses in India are aware of this copyright infringement (most of them are poor camera prints), but there are a whole lot of movies available for free viewership on Google Video. Some of the recent releases which are available

Neel and Nicky
Apaharan

The list is pretty long and one has to just search around in google video with the name of popular Hindi/Tamil/telugu movies to get the entire list.

As per google's copyright policy

To file a notice of infringement with us, you must provide a written communication (by fax or regular mail -- not by email, except by prior agreement) that sets forth the items specified below. Please note that you will be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights. Indeed, in a recent case (please see http://www.onlinepolicy.org/action/legpolicy/opg_v_diebold/ for more information), a company that sent an infringement notification seeking removal of online materials that were protected by the fair use doctrine was ordered to pay such costs and attorneys fees. The company agreed to pay over $100,000. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether material available online infringes your copyright, we suggest that you first contact an attorney.
Can somebody comment on what this means for producers in India and how come only Hindi/Indian movies have found their way into Google Video and no English ones ? Does this mean a producer in India has to retain a lawyer in the US to watch out for infringement and each time a new movie is released , sending an infringement notice is a part of the post release to-do list.

11 comments:

Raviratlami said...

Google is in no way involved in distributing these videos! It is merely searching contents from web, and playing back the videos for the content searcher.

Anonymous said...

Raviratlami,
Google Video is a google's service where you can upload video using google's tools and also host it on Google's server. Content providers can set a price for the video and sell video in the future.
So google is as responsible in-directly for the content.

Bombayite said...

Google vidoe is currently not available in India..

Are others able to download them??

Anonymous said...

Bombayite,
just click on links (Names of movies) to watch the movies online. You don't have to download them to view them.

आशीष गुप्ता said...

Thanks for the idea. I will watch them untill producers decide to something. They are available on torrents site all the time. Wonder why nobody notices?

Anonymous said...

Ha ha..yeah its available in torrent format. BTW do you think Indian Producers have the know how to tackle this ? They themselves are busy stealing from their hollywood counter parts :P

sathish said...

If Indian movie producers sue Google for copyright violation, wonder how many movie production houses across the globe would start suing Indian movie producers for copying their movies.
Majority of the movies made in Hindi for past few years are totally "inspired".

Anonymous said...

Best regards from NY! »

Anonymous said...

better not to comment on this because indian films are mostly copied from american movies which is still unnoticed by hollywood movie makers and indian cinema will get problems by making and showing their movies without copyrights

Gary said...

such a great news. I use too watch online movies through torrent.Thanks for sharing such news.
movie reviews

हरीश said...

Some of the gems from Hindi movies are available online because of this we can watch them..