X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which is due to be released on May 1, is facing piracy woes. Even before the much anticipated movie could find its way to the theatres, high-quality prints of the film have been popping up all over the Internet.

Though the pirated version seems to be full-length, 20th Century Fox representatives have claimed that the online version is incomplete. The FBI and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have launched a full scale investigation. Wolverine is the first of three planned prequels to the X-men franchise. The movie is being directed by Gavin Hood with Jackman reprising the well-liked role.

Online piracy is proving to be a persistent plague dodging the heels of the movie industry worldwide. In India, the three biggest movie sectors – Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood – have lost a fair share of their profits to video and audio piracy. In legal terms piracy is when a film is copied in violation of intellectual property rights and reproduced illegally for sale at a profit.

A recent US India Business Council and Ernst & Young report for 2008, titled 'The Effects of Counterfeiting and Piracy on India's Entertainment Industry', has revealed that the Indian film industry has suffered a loss of nearly $959 million due to piracy. The report also goes on to mention that an estimated 5,71,896 jobs have been lost.

The effects of piracy are being felt so severely that last year in Kollywood, producers of Dhaam Dhoom arranged for an anti-piracy unit before the movie hit the theatres. The most recent case was one in which Tollywood producers asked the Tamil Nadu government to come down heavily on video parlour who were pirating DVDs and VCDs in the city.

Where Hollywood has been battling this invasion for at least a decade, the Indian film industry is still lax in cracking down on piracy. But taking the first step is Mukesh Bhatt of Vishesh Films, who is also the chairperson of the Producers' Guild and Core Committee. Bhatt has linked up with the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the international equivalent of the MPAA.

Rajiv P Dalal, the director of MPA India, is hoping to recruit more filmmakers to the cause and campaign for the optical disk legislation, which has helped reduce piracy in countries like Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia. India does have other legislations in place like the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, and the Copyright Act, 1994. In addition to this India is also attached to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Universal Copyright Convention. But apparently none of these legislations are helping because piracy is slowly but steadily bleeding the Indian Film Industry.