India: Leak of Movie “Udta Punjab” Creates
Unrest in Bollywood
The movie “Udta Punjab” can be boldly categorized as one of the
most controversial movies of our times. The movie which is based on the theme
of drug abuse in the Indian State of Punjab had first fallen into the vicious
trap of the Central Board of Film Certification (hereinafter referred to as the
“CBFC”) which cleared its release with an astonishing 89 cuts and also
fluttered away the word “Punjab” from its title. However, later on the movie
was cleared by the Bombay High Court with only one cut. The second controversy that
the movie landed up in, was its leak on the internet two days prior to its official
scheduled release. The movie was reportedly downloadable on torrent websites.
Indian Daily, Times of India reports that pursuant to the
aforesaid incident, the makers of the movie filed a criminal complaint of
copyright theft with the Bandra- Kurla Complex cyber police station.[i]
Reports also mention that pursuant to the said complaint, movie was removed
from the websites and a message was displayed on the sites which read as
“removed due to a copyright complaint”.
This is not the first time that the Bollywood has encountered the
leak of a movie on the internet prior to its release. There have been several
instances when Bollywood movies have suffered a similar fate.[ii]
In view of such prevalent instances of illegal broadcast of
movies, several times production houses invoke the remedy of John Doe Orders (against unknown defendants)
to restrain illegal downloads and prevent cable operators from broadcasting
the movie without proper license or authorisation from the producer.
Additionally, the Copyright Amendment Act, 2012 also introduces
provisions like protection of
technological measure (Section 65A) and protection
of right management information (Section 65B) which entail digital rights
management measures for preventing piracy in cinematographic films.
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