anti piracy strikes back -Bachelor Party on the Net lands many in police net

[diagus]

In what is billed as a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country, the anti-piracy cell of the Kerala Police has registered cases against 1,010 persons for illegally uploading or downloading on the Internet the Malayalam movie Bachelor Party.

This includes a Keralite engineering student based in Vaashi, Navi Mumbai, and the Coimbatore-based website Tamil Rockers, a press note issued here on Saturday by the anti-piracy cell said.

Over the last 10 days, 30,000 persons were found to have seen Bachelor Party illegally on the Net. The IP addresses of 1,010 persons have already been identified. The anti-piracy cell, the hi-tech cell, and Jadoo Tech Private Solutions — a Kochi-based private firm which did the cyber patrolling for the police — have initiated steps to collect the names and addresses of the persons whose IP addresses have been traced.

An investigation by the anti-piracy cell revealed that the illegal viewing of the film was done by persons based in the U.S., the U.K., the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Ireland, the Philippines, China, South Africa, Uganda, Algeria, Botswana, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan. Within the country, the illegal viewings were reported from New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Rajasthan, Lucknow, Kapurthala, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, Puducherry, Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Ernakulam, Kozhikode, Kottayam, and Palakkad.

The CD/DVD/mobile phone/Internet/memory card rights for Bachelor Party were secured by Sajithan, who owns the Thrissur-based firm Movie Channel. The CDs of the movie were brought out by this company on August 19, 2012. Within two days, Mr. Sajithan submitted a complaint to the anti-piracy cell against the site Tamil Rockers and against 16 IP addresses from where the film had been illegally uploaded to the Net. The subsequent investigation was carried out by a team of police officials headed by the anti-piracy nodal officer and Inspector General of Police B. Sandhya.

A month ago, the CDs of the films Ordinary and Grand Master released by the same company were illegally seen on the Net by 30 lakh and 12 lakh persons respectively, the press note said. In July this year, the anti-piracy cell arrested Abhilash from Thrissur while he was illegally uploading the film Snehaveedu on the Net. Legal action was also initiated against 30 persons working for social sites that illegally hosted Malayalam movies. About 15 laptops were also seized from different locations in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka.

Investigation by the anti-piracy cell of the Kerala police is currently on in 10 cases of Internet misuse. About 70 cases of copyright infringement have been registered in Kerala and outside and about 100 persons have been arrested in this connection.

The illegal sharing of Bachelor Party on the Net comes at a time when the arrest of 15 persons in April for pirating movies from theatres and the consequent non-availability of pirated CDs had led to a substantial increase in the government’s income from theatres, the press note added.



The Hindu : States / Kerala : <i>Bachelor Party</i> on the Net lands many in police net
Legal Action Against 30,000 People who Watched ‘Bachelor Party’ on YouTube - Tecknews.in

 

[sumonpathak]

how are they supposed identify all 30000? how are they going to differentiate between persons having dynamic ip and persons having static ip's? how would they find people behind the proxies? unless they announce HOW are they zeroing on everyone of those 30k people they are potentially vulnerable to lawsuits...

 

[whitestar_999]

lawsuits here in India!!this is not USA so forget about lawsuits.most probably strong cases will be registered against those suspected of professional(read making money) uploading & rest will be charged with minor sections of IPC/CrPC which may require some 4-5 trips to courts & payment of fines.again social/family status will be taken into consideration & those who have contacts/influence(read high society family youngsters downloading) will not even see formal charges.as for evidence torrent is pretty open protocol & any decent tracking organization can collect IP's of all the sharing persons.also ISP providers do keep a track of dynamic IP's allotted by way of port no/telephone line at local exchange(for ADSL connections) & there are similar arrangements in case of cable broadband providers/mobile internet.

 

[Tech&ME]

only IP's are not enough to make a charge sheet, other evidences are also necessary.

 

[whitestar_999]

IP is enough to make a case.if you read ToC of ISP providers there is a clause i think which lays responsibility on you for the misuse of connection if any.so if your ip is used for illegal purposes it makes the connection owner responsible.(just like if your licensed weapon is even found in possession of another person it makes you legally accountable for fine/punishment).

 

[RCuber]

AFAIK, the person responsible of uploading the copyrighted material will be charged and the guys downloading wont be.

 

[whitestar_999]

they too are breaking the law though agencies may go soft on them.also when you are using torrent you are not only downloading but also simultaneously uploading(unlike downloading from file sharing sites like rapidshare)so you are also abetting/participating in the breaking of law regarding distribution of copyrighted material which seems to be the case here.(it is much harder anyway for indian police to get IP addresses of downloaders from sites like rapidshare but much easier to track torrents).

 

[gopi_vbboy]

Internet in india is becoming more complicated.

 

[Faun]

Always encrypted on.

 

[ssdivisiongermany1933]

Atleast something has started in India at the name of anti piracy

 

[whitestar_999]

Always encrypted on.

if you mean encryption option in utorrent/similar software then you are mistaken.this option does nothing to protect your identity which is not possible anyway because of open nature of current torrent protocol.this option is meant to bypass ISP traffic shaping policies which throttle torrent speeds.only way to download something from net with complete anonymity is by using a vpn which does not keep logs & allot single ip to multiple connecting external IPs & delete even these logs daily/within few hours.

 

[sharang.d]

^Any such free services available?

 

[whitestar_999]

no!free vpn services & even many paid ones keep logs.for truly anonymous vpn services read this:
Which VPN Providers Really Take Anonymity Seriously? | TorrentFreak

 

[Faun]

if you mean encryption option in utorrent/similar software then you are mistaken.this option does nothing to protect your identity which is not possible anyway because of open nature of current torrent protocol.this option is meant to bypass ISP traffic shaping policies which throttle torrent speeds.only way to download something from net with complete anonymity is by using a vpn which does not keep logs & allot single ip to multiple connecting external IPs & delete even these logs daily/within few hours.

Isn't it that they wont know what you downloaded but can only confirm if the downloaded file found on your PC ?

 

[whitestar_999]

no.they will exactly know what file is being downloaded from which IP at what time.best you can do is plead ignorance saying it wasn't you using the connection but then again you can be held responsible(see my previous post#5) for letting your connection being abused or you can give away the name of the person you think is responsible(again not an option since it will be either you or your family member).

 

[Flash]

Whatif a person downloaded the movie and give it to 20 of his friends?
Will those people too be accounted, coz there is neither an option for IP or any other.

Just copying it to USB, watch the movie and delete it once over.

 

[whitestar_999]

technically those 20 persons are breaking the law but practically it is impossible to build any case against them because it will be one man's word against 20 with no concrete evidence.

 

[kg11sgbg]

^^ Just want to know.
What if someone or myself using personally ,without any commercial gains, NON-GENUINE/Pirated Windows OS(XP/VISTA/7/8); any one version,will MS sue us?
Will the Indian Cyber Law, act against us, by arresting us?

 

[whitestar_999]

you are breaking the law but MS don't go after customers using pirated windows without any commercial gains(but not if you are using it in your mini office on multiple pc's doing commercial activities) & you can always plead ignorance saying you didn't knew it was pirated/shopkeeper just asked windows or not/blah blah... also MS too knows how time consuming indian law process is so it doesn't waste resources going after small fish(read persons like you) but instead go after shops selling pirated windows or commercial establishments using pirated windows.

P.S.btw you can spend just ~2600 rupees to get a genuine windows 7 home premium upgrade & then can use one of the 3 tricks to install it fresh on a hard disk.not exactly pirating & better than using pirated windows or if you can not afford Rs.6000 price tag of windows 7 premium.

 

[Flash]

This news surely creates shockwaves among those who're using pirated softwares knowingly/unknowingly in their system.
I would say 6k price tag of windows is too high to spend for a Normal-working-Indian.

If people know how to use OSS, then surely MS or anyother companies of that premium sort, will surely have to eat the dirt.