Indian Movie Pirates Win the Battle

Numerous attempts by the entertainment industry in cooperation with the Anti-Piracy Cell of the Kerala Police to crack down on copyright infringers failed. The authorities had to admit that attempts to locate the original source of uploading the content through some software tools had no results. Moreover, hopes that the local ISPs would block portals hosting pirated content have also backfired.

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The Internet Service Providers Association of India is yet to receive a formal request from the Anti-Piracy Cell of the Kerala Police on locating the infringers, but the attempts by the broadband providers to block such portals weren’t effective going by past experience. The outfit explained that they couldn’t block it because material was being uploaded from different servers. This is why they had an idea that the Department of Telecom, which provides the license to ISPs, could play a better role in this situation – it was able to block uploading illegal content trafficked via the international gateway. It also could ask the Indian host company to disable such services.

The Internet Service Providers Association recalled the swift action by Department of Telecom asking the ISPs to block all links which seemed to contain illegal content. The outfit claimed that Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Director General of Computer Emergency Response Team-India, and Department of Telecom should be made party in lawsuits filed against unauthorized uploading and file-sharing to control online piracy.

The Internet service providers were warned that they must exercise due diligence against illegal file-sharing. For instance, Supreme Court lawyer said that they could get into trouble for not implementing the provisions of the IT Act. Internet service providers are regarded as intermediaries under the cyber law and they shouldn’t host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share any data which infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other rights. So, the ISPs are blamed for not complying with their legal liabilities and for attempts to shift their responsibilities on to Department of Telecom. In the meantime, State Anti-Piracy Cell chief claimed that movie pirates had escaped the eyes of the police by using latest software to cover their Internet tracks.