"The State government has adopted a no-tolerance policy towards online piracy of films and will soon have a plan in place to tackle and effectively curb piracy. We need to adopt strong measures and countermeasures to weed out all kinds of piracy," said Jayesh Ranjan.

Hyderabad: The State government will soon have dedicated police officers and cyber crime experts to monitor and if required bring down websites which host pirated material including films, IT Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said on Monday.

Speaking after a meeting with police, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and members of the film industry here, he said: “The State government has adopted a no-tolerance policy towards online piracy of films and will soon have a plan in place to tackle and effectively curb piracy. We need to adopt strong measures and countermeasures to weed out all kinds of piracy.”

The State, which is already empowered with an Intellectual Property Crimes Unit (IPCU), was very serious about piracy and it had all the plans to bring it down, he said. “Even representatives of the Telugu film industry told the government that they are faced with huge losses because of piracy. We have been asked to formulate better plans to curb the menace,” said a senior cyber crime official who was a part of the meeting.

In the past, the Cybercrime Department was successful in tracking down the culprits who were involved in piracy of Bahubali-II, saving crores of rupees for the makers of the film, he added.
“In the meeting, the ISPs too were asked to designate a nodal officer who can keep a watch over websites which upload such data onto their websites and bring them down,” said Addl Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Crime) KCS Raghuvir.