Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama has recently reported that the Calcutta High Court has passed an ex-parte injunction restraining a number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from providing access to www.songs.pk, a website which has gained notoriety for providing the latest Bollywood music for free downloading to all visitors. As per Nikhil’s report the lawsuit before the Calcutta High Court has been filed by the Phonographic Performance Ltd. (PPL), Indian Music Industry (IMI) and Sagarika Music Pvt. Ltd. The defendants named in the suit are various ISPs such as Dishnet Wireless Ltd, Reliance Wimax Ltd, Hathway Cable & Datacom Pvt Ltd, Hughes Communications Ltd India, Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd, Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd, Wipro Ltd, Sify Technologies Ltd, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Vodafone India Ltd, and BG Broadband India Pvt Ltd. Nikhil has also given us links to the order of the Calcutta High Court which can be accessed over here and here. (Image from here)
As of now, I’m still able to access the website through a BSNL connection and a Tata connection. However some of the Medianama visitors have reported the website to be blocked. The Facebook group of songs.pk has carried comments of some of the users facing blocking issues.
Honestly, I’m surprised that PPL and IMI took so long to block this website. However it is unlikely that even this blockade will be effective. ISP enforced blockades are quite easy to circumvent through proxy websites. More likely, is the possibility of the owners of songs.pk just registering a new domain name. The only way to effectively shut down websites like songs.pk is to seize the entire domain name and arrest the person behind the website for copyright infringement. That’s easier said than done since the ‘.pk’ is the country domain name for Pakistan.
As per the registration details of the domain name – www.songs.pk – the billing and technical contacts for the website are based in Onatario, Canada in the name of Sushant Mangat. It also appears that the servers of the website are based in Canada. Bollywood already has a history of enforcing its copyrights vigorously in Canada. For example Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Reliance Entertainment even got a John Doe order (later vacated) in Canada to stamp out piracy related to ‘3 Idiots’. The other contact details for this website give details of persons who are in Pakistan. Enforcing copyright law in Pakistan may be a tad difficult given that the rule of law in that country has taken a temporary backseat. However the company which administers the ‘.pk’ domain is based out of the U.S. and possibly easier to target, provided that American law allows for targeting of the intermediaries.
Internet piracy is rampant because there are no enforcement agency. I recently red that in UN india proposed to create an international body to regulate the internet. this is a welcoming step in my opinion. Law always has problem to catch up with technology. 🙂