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The former managing director of The Walt Disney Company in India has controversially claimed that he in fact "loves piracy" during a conference attended by media heavyweights including major Hollywood studios.
Samir Bangara, who worked for Disney UTV prior to joining media startup Qyuki.com, says he loves piracy because it solves one of the biggest problems facing media companies at the moment: discoverability.
In addition, gauging the popularity of pirated content can be helpful when it comes to making decisions about content purchasing.
"There are tens of thousands of hours of content getting uploaded. The challenge is finding what is working," says Bangara.
"What is getting pirated is by default working. Game of Thrones is great, so it’s going to get pirated," he added.
Bangara's suggestion may not seem that outlandish on second thought, as many companies already rely on piracy data to gauge user demand.
Not everyone who attended the conference agreed with Bangara. Shufen Lin, the head of content company Starhub, laments that piracy is "the biggest thing that keeps us awake at night."
Lin explained that Singapore also faces a unique set of issues when it comes to piracy due to the country's strong censorship laws, meaning that users are also downloading illegally to bypass censorship, and not just so they can access content for free.
Samir Bangara, who worked for Disney UTV prior to joining media startup Qyuki.com, says he loves piracy because it solves one of the biggest problems facing media companies at the moment: discoverability.
In addition, gauging the popularity of pirated content can be helpful when it comes to making decisions about content purchasing.
"There are tens of thousands of hours of content getting uploaded. The challenge is finding what is working," says Bangara.
"What is getting pirated is by default working. Game of Thrones is great, so it’s going to get pirated," he added.
Bangara's suggestion may not seem that outlandish on second thought, as many companies already rely on piracy data to gauge user demand.
Not everyone who attended the conference agreed with Bangara. Shufen Lin, the head of content company Starhub, laments that piracy is "the biggest thing that keeps us awake at night."
Lin explained that Singapore also faces a unique set of issues when it comes to piracy due to the country's strong censorship laws, meaning that users are also downloading illegally to bypass censorship, and not just so they can access content for free.