Film producer Kalaipuli S.Thanu on Thursday moved the Madras High Court seeking to prevent illegal downloads of superstar Rajnikanth’s upcoming film Kabali through about 180 websites and “countless unknown sites.”
Mr.Thanu in the writ petition, sought a direction to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to issue instructions to all internet service providers (ISPs) to block websites offering illegal downloads of the film.
Senior counsel Vijay Narayan for the producer included the Tamil Nadu Anti-Piracy Cell as a respondent to ensure compliance. The petitioner enclosed a screenshot of a site, which claimed that visitors could access 30 films at the rate of 12,000 downloads.
Counsel said they had arranged a live demo of another website to the court to show that an entire feature film could be downloaded for as little as Rs. 10. From that single copy, several thousand copies could be made and sold in the black market, he added.
While pirates make Rs. 20 to 30 a copy, the total loss is incurred by the producers, artists and others involved in the making of a multi-crore film, he contended.
Taking the case well beyond the immediate interest of “Kabali,” the writ petition says more than 70% of total revenue generated online was garnered by illegal downloads of films, music and pornography. Only 30% was paid for by people using for legal purposes on legal means, he said.
In fact, the upgrade of technology from 2G to 3G and then to 4G was mainly to facilitate the illegal downloads, Vijay Narayan said. For normal users 2G was enough, he said.