The Hot Business of Movie Piracy in Iran - Part 2: From Stands to Websites

 

Finding pirated movies in Iran is easy. You buy the DVDs from street vendors in the main public squares, or you can do a Google search for the sellers’ contact information. Movie piracy is an underground but established business, and a full-time occupation for many Iranians. The customers are happy to be able to watch newly-released movies and television series from across the world after a short delay and for a low price.

Hollywood and Bollywood movies are especially popular in Iran. In the past few years the police have given up rounding up movie vendors from the streets. Once in a while security forces trumpet “a special operation to destroy the business of movie piracy” but after a short time things go back to normal and movie vendors return to the streets. A range of international cinema, banned Iranian movies, or even Iranian movies that are still in theaters make the stands very colorful.

With the passing of each day the futility of trying to control this market becomes more evident, and access to new productions from around the world becomes easier. Now not only you can find the latest releases, but you can buy pornographic DVD’s from the street vendors and watch them in comfort.

Mohammad is a well-known video vendor in Imam Hossein Square in east central Tehran, and you can find all kinds of movies on his stand, from latest Hollywood and Bollywood movies to collections of Iranian movies with popular actors such as Behrouz Vossoughi and Khosrow Shakibai. He says that his customers like him because he is discerning in choosing the DVDs that he sells. The police have arrested him twice, but on both occasions he got off by paying bribes. “Sometimes the city agents descend on you because you have created an obstacle on the sidewalk,” he says. “But it is easy to get rid of them. One should be on guard all the time. If you hear a whistle you must stuff all your movies in the bag. Then no law is broken and no obstacle is placed in the path of the pedestrian traffic.”

 

Less Risk Through Technology

Afshin is another movie vendor around the same area. He says that he started his business with video CDs but believes that very soon the DVDs will go away as well. “With a small flash memory of 32 gigs you can put at least 20 movies in your pocket. He sells the files to his phone customers and sells DVDs for 60 cents on the street. “Many customers like to watch movies on DVD players and don’t have TVs that can show MPEG4s,” he says. “So we have to burn DVDs. When all can watch MPEG4s as easily as DVDs next to their family then I can stand on the sidewalk with a small computer or a tablet and show the customers only the covers. I can just download their selections onto their flash memories or their hard drives. That way our risks would shrink.”

Some DVDs on Afshin’s stand contain three movies and cost only 80 cents. These DVDs are very popular, he says. “People like to watch more and pay less. When they want to buy a single-movie DVD they inspect one side of the cover and then the other side and struggle with themselves. But they pay for a three-movie DVD easily because they seem confident that they would like at least one of them.”

I ask him about most popular genres. “Action and war movies are very popular,” he answers. “People love brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise and the stars of action movies. Whenever they come out with a new movie, we cannot burn DVDs fast enough.”

I take a look at the Iranian movies that he is offering. I notice Ali Hatami’s Mother, the Oscar-winner A Separation by Asghar Farhadi, Dariush Mehrjui’s The Music Man and a pile of movies starring Behrouz Vossoughi who, according to Afshin, provides him with a significant portion of his income.

When I ask vendors for newly released world movies, they promise to get them for me quickly, but when I ask for banned Iranian movies like Kianoush Ayari’s The Paternal House, which is about an honor killing that casts its shadow on multiple generations, they frown. “There are no sites to download such movies from,” explains Afshin. “When somebody puts them up for download we will have them.” Of course he does not want to bash the hopes of his customer completely. “Up to now we have been able to get all banned movies,” he assures me.

When I go from Imam Hossein Square to the more upscale Vali Asr Square, the tastes of the customers change completely. Sina is one of movie vendors in Tehran who often sets up his stands in front of the College of Arts and is an “artistic” vendor. He has a number of steady customers who order films from a list of movies and directors. He says that they are not much into Hollywood and want arthouse films. They look for landmark movies in the history of cinema and the winners of film festivals. When I ask him about it he laughs. “Artistic customers buy movies that others don’t,” he says. “I bring some Hollywood movies but they must be something very special for these guys to buy them.”

Sina is not the only movie vendor in the area. A little further down sits Shahrokh with a sack full of disks next to him. He hands a bundle of DVDs to his customers, and they flip through them and buy what they want for 80 cents each. Like Mohammad and Afshin, Shahrokh reports that Hollywood movies sell the most. “I do sell Indian movies once in a while,” he says. “But it is not like years ago when Indian and Turkish movies sold well. Now it is only American, only new. Everybody asks about new releases from Hollywood. For them even 2010 is old.”

 

Home Delivery, A Phone Call Away

I answer the phone. There is no need for me to pass a difficult test to gain his trust. I had emailed Mehdi before, had sent him a list of movies and my phone number and now he is calling back. I found his email with a quick search on Google. He had posted a long list of old and new movies with the names of directors and actors and if you spent a little time you could find every movie. I ask him where he got all of these movies. “I downloaded many of them,” he says, “but some, like Orson Welles’s Othello are hard to find, so I transfer them from VHS to DVD.” Movie fans give him access to their libraries and in return, he gets them new releases.

Buying movies from Mehdi could not be easier. Give him your address and a messenger will deliver. Now that I think about it I see that his trust in me was not unjustified. I neither have his address nor have seen his face. Only a phone number and a conversation about DVD’s which cannot get him into much trouble. His offence is not big enough for the police to spend time and resources on him. An hour later, a messenger rings my bell and I pay him what I owe Mehdi plus a pre-arranged fee for the delivery.

 

Multiple Choice

Movie fans have an easy time these days. They don’t have to hide movies under their shirts, they don’t have to wait long for new releases and have no difficulty in understanding films in foreign languagee. They can visit a download site or an online movie store or buy them from the street.

Mansour, another street vendor in the Valiasr Square area says that he has to change his DVD writer because it burns out after around 500 copies. He does not want to stay in the business of selling DVDs. “I do this to pay expenses until I find a better job.” He adds that this is the fifth DVD writer that he has purchased. A quick calculation shows that he has burned about 2,500 disks in the past 10 months, which has earned him a total of close to $2,000 for that period or $200 per month if he has sold each DVD for 80 cents.

He says that it all depends on how seriously you take the job and how much you want to invest. “For some people this is a serious business, unlike me. They have the equipment to burn eight or more disks at the same time.”

Sina, who sells DVD near the Tehran College of Arts explains how he can sell a DVD for 60 cents. It costs less than 40 cents to make one, he says. “There is an initial cost for the master copy. Then comes the cost of the subtitles, which is cheaper than in the past cheche, and sometimes you can get evwn get the subtitles for free.” The rest of his cost the price of blank disks, which is about 16 cents if he purchases them in bulk at wholesale prices. Then comes packaging. All told, the profit is 33 cents per disk.

When I tell him about the volume sold by Mansour, Sina comments that Mansour is not really into the business. He himself makes an average of $780 per month “easily,” he says. “I burn the disks myself. Those who offer movies in the squares, he says, must make at least $400 a month to stay in business.

As Internet use spreads in Iran, the necessity to buy movies from street vendors becomes less and less. Online distribution is becoming a more serious contender. In addition to sites that display a catalogue and deliver the DVDs, there are sites which allow the users to download movies at a very low price. But online distribution of any kind has both advantages and disadvantages, according to one seller who runs such a site. “Our job is easier and it does not take much time. On the other hand, street vendors have direct contact with people and sell the movies. We must wait for the people to visit our sites and sometimes it is by pure accident.”

It would be good to add a conclusion here. How might piracy change if Iran’s relations with the West improve?

Is there an assumption that piracy is the government’s fault?

How do Iranians—especially those who appreciate film as an art--feel about the ethics of piracy at a time when the Internet is making it harder for creative people to get paid for their work and for creative industries to survive?