Recently the world has seen an uprising in the use of OTT streaming platforms and internet streaming of content. Once what was the position of TV in the market is now that of streaming platforms. India too has not remained untouched by this change. With the spread of the internet in India, the use of OTT platforms increased to a great extent.
In the current scenario, the streaming platforms slowly have taken a significant place in the market. But there growth still remains limited due to the widespread piracy in India. Though, due to multiple reasons, one cannot exactly pinpoint the data related to piracy; still surveys and studies depict India to be one of the countries that is affected most by the problem of piracy. Due to a huge population and low per-capita income and an easy penetration of the servers, India becomes vulnerable to piracy. With the introduction of Telegram, the problem has further escalated as it can provide pirated files to users without much technical knowledge.
Piracy led many people of India to stream content that is available to OTT subscribers for free. This in turn leads to the streaming platforms going on a loss. They came up with several ideas to avoid their loss and increase their user base in India. People get access to contents which are not yet released in India, series that have just been released and movies that are even running in theatres and have not been released digitally. Strategies like collaboration with telecom service providers and providing some content on their platforms for free are some of them. Still, the issue created by piracy is relevant for them. People still use piracy to watch premium content for free.
The widespread use of piracy makes it challenging for the makers to create good content, when they can’t get a return on it. It also affects the artists who work hard in creating a film or series and people watch their content for free. Most of all it affects the streaming platforms that release premium content for their paid subscribers but people can access them for free. This issue is something that needs to be tackled not only by law, but by people’s own morality as well. People should think of the efforts that go into making a good content and should appreciate the effort by watching those content legally.