Well, anti-piracy initiatives in India are picking up as content rights holders and TV channels look to bring to task pirates.

The latest in this regard is the police action — initiated on complaints filed by Viacom18 — taken against one person involved with Thop TV, an app that aggregates TV channels and streaming content. However, its activities have been termed illegal in India.

According to media reports, Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd partnered with Maharashtra Cyber Crime Cell, Mumbai to fight against online content piracy that breaches copyrights laws of the country.

The Mumbai Police’s cyber crime branch arrested Subhanjan Kayet for his involvement in Thop TV and accused him of technical manipulations to illegally help stream content from Viacom18’s stable of TV channels and its OTT platform, Voot.

“Special anti-piracy unit MIPCU (Maharashtra Intellectual Property Crime Unit) arrested accused Subhanjan Samiran Kayet from Gobardanaga Harbra, 24 Paragana, West Bengal on May 22, 2022 as he appears to be the lead developer of the THOP TV app. We have sufficient evidence regarding this,” a statement issued by Sanjay Shintre, superintendent of police, Maharashtra Cyber, Mumbai, said.

On being produced in a lower court in Mumbai, Kayet was sent to five days police custody with the bank account of the accused frozen.

“It is important to make the message clear that operating or abetting a business of infringement is a serious offence, which affects the creative community at large. The perpetrators will be found and brought before law,” a Viacom18 spokesperson stated.

However, entertainment industry observers are of the opinion that lack of effective rules in the criminal law of India makes it difficult to prosecute content pirates as most of the platforms are based outside India. Lack of adequate awareness amongst stakeholders, despite government-industry initiatives, leads to millions of dollars annual revenue loss to piracy.

Meanwhile, according to Business Standard, Disney Star had filed a police complaint with Bengaluru cyber police a few days back against a few digital platforms indulging in piracy, especially of IPL cricket.

The police compliant, confirmed Santosh Ram, station house officer, cybercell, Bengaluru Police, has been registered against TamilMV, TamilBlasters, Tamilrockers, and an application (app) PikaShow TV for carrying leaked television (TV), over-the-top (OTT), and film content on their platforms.

“The cumulative traffic on these platforms is estimated at 62 million. They mostly offer Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam content, which is leaked on their websites. Of late, they have been offering content in other languages, including Hindi,” Ram told Business Standard.