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Want to combat piracy? Go for John Doe order

Last Updated 25 May 2012, 15:50 IST

Piracy is one of the major roadblocks in the growth of the Indian film industry - Bollywood itself loses Rs.4,000 crore every year because of that. But now it can be prevented by using the John Doe order that safeguards the copyright of a film in advance against unidentified probable people who may infringe it.

John Doe is a much faster pre-emptive legal measure to curtail piracy of films through all mediums and is applicable in India.

"Bollywood incurs a loss of almost Rs.4,000 crore due to piracy and it's time that something should be done. John Doe order is an order given by a court to stop piracy against unknown and unnamed probable offenders," Sanjay Tandon, vice president music and anti-piracy, Reliance Entertainment, told IANS.

"If we approach the court for copyright infringement, it takes a lot of time because it requires filing court papers. The procedure takes at least four to five days and by that time the owner of the copyright has already incurred huge losses," he added.

The John Doe order applies to all those websites which allow their users/customers to download/stream films without proper licence from the film's copyright owner and also to ISPs which make their platform available to their customers to download/stream films without proper licence.

The order is applicable all across -- physical, cable, online and against anyone, who indulges in infringing copyright amounting to piracy.

Last week, the country's major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) blocked their access to the leading torrent websites -- The Pirate Bay and Torrent Reactor -- as well as video and link sharing websites such as Vimeo, Dailymotion, Pastebin and Xmarks, much to the disappointment of the netizens.

The blockade was a result of the John Doe order taken by producers of Telugu film "Dammu" and Tamil film "3" to prevent the movies from being leaked online.
Reliance Entertainment has in the past got a similar court order for its films like "Singham", "Bodyguard" and "Don 2". Later UTV Motion Pictures, Yash Raj Films and others followed suit.

Though the order doesn't hold any punishment as it is against unknown and unnamed offenders, it comes into effect without much delay.

"I would say please don't get involved in piracy because even we also don't like to get into legal issues. It is time that people start respecting copyright and the hardwork involved in creating the product," Tandon said.

The other efforts made to stop piracy include securing prints on their way to the theatres and policing the print in certain select theatres 24x7.

The units or warehouses that manufacture and store illegal DVDs are being raided. Cable operators are also being monitored to ensure that illegal telecast of movies doesn't happen.

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(Published 25 May 2012, 15:50 IST)

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