In an attempt to prevent pirates from downloading their latest movie Singham, Reliance Entertainment came up with a rather unconventional anti-piracy strategy. The company managed to obtain a so-called John Doe order from the Indian High Court, which they are now sending to various torrent sites that could potentially link to a pirated version of the movie.
STAR World, a prominent English language television channel in India owned by News Corp, has just announced a brand new programming segment. Interestingly, it is named after the country’s most popular torrent search engine, Torrentz. With ‘Torrentz’, which will air The Good Guys, The Walking Dead and Detroit 1-8-7, the TV-channel hopes to offer a convenient alternative to ever increasing BitTorrent use in India.
AiPlex Software, the Indian anti-piracy outfit that made a name for itself when it allegedly DDoSed several major BitTorrent sites including The Pirate Bay, has returned to the scene. The outfit is once again sending out many DMCA takedown requests to torrent sites. In addition, they threaten to impose a pan-Indian ban by the local Government on sites that dare to contest their requests, even when they have the right to do so.
BitTorrent usage has been growing exponentially in India over the last years. With this increased use of BitTorrent, the local entertainment industry is feeling threatened, and last weekend India’s first BitTorrent raid was carried out by the Hyderabad police. A ‘gang’ of four members was arrested and more are expected to follow.
The Delhi High Court has fined Microsoft for harassing alleged software pirates by taking them to court in the national capitol, instead of the cities where the crimes had supposedly occurred. According to the ruling, using money as a power tool is not condoned without repercussions.
BitTorrent’s popularity is on the rise in India, and with a massive increase in broadband subscribers just around the corner, it is the number one growth market for BitTorrent sites. With a population of over 1.1 billion people and only 4.5 million broadband subscribers, there is huge amount of untapped potential.
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