Recently, the popular video streaming site Megavideo was raided by federal prosecutors and shut down due to copyright infringement. We wonder what would happen if those same prosecutors were to take a look at certain Hindi films which are “inspired” (ahem, copied scene for scene), from English films. And we aren’t just referring to the highly-inspired music composer Pritam either. From Kuch Kuch Hota Hai to Dostana, (no, K3G was not copied from anywhere. Apart from Karan Johar, no other filmmaker bothers so much with family estrangement issues), these movies happily ‘borrow’ in part or full from Hollywood. And since we don’t see any disclaimer that says: ”This scene has been copied frame for frame from a more meaningful English film. Any resemblance is purely intended,” we assume none of these were officially borrowed. Here’re some of the most blatant ones:

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You might want to think twice before making a trip to Korea this summer (not that you’d want to, but just saying). We hear they aren’t too happy with Indians after Mahesh Bhatt copied one of their film posters for Murder 2 and ‘forgot’ to mention it in the credits. Add to that Zindagi na Milegi Dobara’s borrowed poster and next we know the IMDb (which has currently listed over 500 Bollywood movies as plagiarised) will release a separate list of copied posters too. Unless they release a section entirely titled “Plagiarised films” only for Bollywood. Maybe they’ll name the section ‘Pritam’.

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If the tall claims on movie posters are anything to go by, Housefull 2 is an even bigger hit than its prequel. In fact, even the sternest critics managed a hushed guffaw in the scene where the actors get stranded on an island and later find out that it houses a resort. We’d love to see the faces of those critics when they find out that the scene has been lifted from a chick flick called Lovewrecked. And unlike most students who copy-paste their assignments and make sure the original is well hidden, one look at the easy accessible promo of Lovewrecked makes it obvious that the intention of the director was only to get “inspired”. That’s what happens when you sack the scriptwriter and leave the job to one of the spot boys.

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Gasped out loud and spilled your popcorn when you found out that in Race, Bipasha loved Saif after all and just married Akshaye Khanna to go along with Saif’s plan? News flash: it has been inspired from Goodbye Lover where Patricia Arquette loves Don Johnson but gets married to his younger brother Dermot Mulroney. Don’t go over to Abbas Mustan’s house to demand your money back yet – know that even Baazigar and 36 China Town were copied, and get all the money back! Which just means not copying the script for Race would have jinxed the movie.

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Farah Khan’s Tees Maar Khan was universally hated. That’s maybe coz for the first time she actually WROTE something herself instead of just copying it from an English film a la Main Hoon Na. So even though MHN was a hit, the premise of the protagonist going back to high school as part of an undercover job has been inspired from Never Been Kissed. But that's okay... so long as Om Shanti Om was ENTIRELY original. Um, wasn't that, too, shrouded in some controversy around the time of its release about being inspired by the Rishi-Kapoor starrer Karz? Ah, well... sounds about right.