In attempt to protect a new movie, an Indian court has gone to extreme lengths, instructing at least 40 Internet service providers to block at least 1,250 sites that might make the newly released movie Force 2 freely available.


Copyright owners more and more often request a blockade of “pirate” websites these days. They believe that if people can’t access pirate websites, they’ll turn to legitimate sources instead. In the meantime, whole site blockades have been granted only against the worst infringers – for instance, websites like The Pirate Bay, which contains a significant percentage of links to infringing files and doesn’t respond to DMCA notices.

Apparently, India chose a more aggressive approach, with copyright owners asking the court to grant them a so-called John Doe order on a case-by-case basis. This is what was done by Viacom18, a joint venture between Viacom and the Network 18 Group, which has just released the movie Force 2. Once a DVD screener copy of the movie leaked online, the company went to court to tackle the “rampant online piracy”. The Madras High Court has granted it an injunction which orders 40 major ISPs to block 1,250 websites which might be offering the movie for free.

Moreover, aside from those 40, all other non-specified Internet service providers are also supposed to comply with the order. Similarly, the order also covers any other website beyond the 1,250 already named. The most important thing is that it orders whole websites to be blocked, not just the infringing link. In other words, if someone uploads a copy to YouTube, the platforms could face blocking in a country with 450m+ Internet users.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.