Barjatya has also unveiled 90 webisodes and mobisodes, of three minutes each, that will be available for free online streaming and as mobile downloads for Idea subscribers.

Piracy of intellectual property is not new to the media and entertainment sector. However, the scale of the problem is definitely new-fangled. A recent study estimates that the Indian entertainment industry loses $4 billion and more than 800,000 jobs each year because of piracy.

Not ready to give up on digital distribution just yet, entertainment majors such as Rajshri Media, UTV, YashRaj Studios, and Shemaroo Entertainment, among many others, are slowly building their digital roadmaps to tap the 5 million broadband-connected homes in India.

"First with music, and now with movies, as broadband capabilities expand, hundreds of thousands of copies race across the Internet daily, clearly harming producers and legitimate retailers," laments Siddharth Roy Kapur, CEO, UTV Motion Pictures.

Image: Students walks over pirated VCDs of various Bollywood and Hollywood films during a anti-piracy protest in New Delhi | Photograph: Raveendran/AFP/Getty Images