Chennai:The Madras high court has directed the home secretary and DGP to conduct a meeting with all persons who are aggrieved by piracy of films, to arrive at an amicable solution for preventing such piracy.
Justice Pushpa Satyanarayana posted to November 28, further hearing of the petition filed by Film Exhibitors Association of Tiruchy and Thanjavur areas. In its petition, the association sought to restrain the police from arresting the owners of any theatre, who are members of the petitioner’s association on a complaint to the effect that a film screened therein was captured in a camera unauthorizedly by such theatre owners, unless, after due inquiry, there is a prima facie evidence to show that such capture was done at the best of or with the connivance of such owner/s.
When the petition came up for hearing, K. Ravi, counsel for the petitioner, submitted that in recent times piracy of films has become a grave concern and though many measures were being taken by authorities to curb the same, it has continued to pose a challenge to the entire film industry.
While so, the film producers were unmindfully filing complaints against theatre owners falsely accusing them as being responsible for such piracy and the resulting losses caused to the film producers and the police were arresting or attempting to arrest the theatre owners merely on the basis of such complaints, without any enquiry. This makes the theatre owner to run from pillar to post to obtain appropriate bail or anticipatory bail. The theatre owners cannot be made responsible for all piracy, he added.
He said upon booking of the theatres and under the instructions of the film producers, Digital Cinema Service providers like ‘Qube Cinema Technologies Pvt. Ltd, supply digital prints of films to theatres for the release and exhibition. Service providers like Qube have a hi-tech watermark on the prints supplied by them to theatres which can be detected by experts while viewing the film on screen. Such watermarks will also be retrievable by experts from any copies made from such prints.
From such watermarks, the experts can deduce the time when and the theatre from where a pirated copy was made. With this information complaints were being arbitrarily filed against the theatre owners concerned, he added.
