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Stealing the ‘show’ from across the borders

City cops clueless about secret recording of films
Hyderabad: Despite the presence of movie piracy syndicates in Hyderabad, the police cannot take down pirated versions of new Telugu movies shared on hundreds of websites. A majority of websites listed by the anti-video piracy cell of the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce as illegal websites are hosted and operated from foreign countries. The secret recording of films in cinema theatres is done in countries like the US.
The request of the police to internet service providers to block the pirated content is ignored. After the arrest of three students, who were running several websites with the pirated content including the new Telugu film Rudramadevi, the police found that removing the content from the internet is far from possible.
The three suspects were sharing the content that was already on the internet after an unidentified person uploaded it. They were earning money through pop up ads on their websites.
“In the case of Rudramadevi, there are more than 140 ‘leechers’ on the web as of now. It is not clear who originally provided the file. It could be an uploader from outside,” said cyber crime inspector P. Raju.
While police could only catch the people in the city who share the content and earn a meagre amount, the main nexus still cannot be tackled by enforcement agencies.
They earn big money with each new movie being released on file-sharing platforms.
“Tracking the owners is not a simple task. Earlier attempts to track them down by tapping their commercial transactions was a failure,” said a senior cop from Hyderabad.
The only way for enforcement agencies was to ban the websites with the help of internet service providers. However, in case of Baahubali, despite an order from a Hyderabad court asking the ISPs to ban the websites, nothing much happened. People can still watch pirated versions of Bahubali on hundreds of websites online. Experts say even if one or two sites can be barred, more new sites will pop up with the same content.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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