Rajinikanth’s 2.0 release: Madras high court directs ISPs to block 12,000 websites including TamilRockers

CHENNAI: A day before director S Shankar’s “2.0,” starring Rajinikanth is scheduled to hit the theatres across the world, the Madras high court on Wednesday directed 37 internet service providers to block more than 12,000 websites that exhibit pirated versions of

Tamil

movies. The list includes more than 2,000 websites operated by TamilRockers.

Justice M Sundar passed the order on Wednesday while allowing a plea moved by Lyca Productions Private Limited, the producer of the movie.

When the plea came up for hearing, Lyca’s counsel Vijayan Subramanian produced an extensive list of 12,564 such illegal websites and contended that when TamilRockers website is blocked, it immediately creates mirror websites by changing an insignificant part of the URL or any other extension and are therefore able to reinstate the infringing material with minimal effort.

Subramanian produced a probable list of extension of ‘TamilRockers’ and sought for an injunction against all such websites.

The producer has invested substantial sums of money in the production of the film and is scheduled to be released in more than 7,000 screens worldwide on November 29. The movie is releasing in more than five languages including Mandarin in China.

The official trailer of “ 2.0” was released on YouTube and has garnered 13,089,498 views so far, the counsel said.

While the company has acquired all exploitation and distribution rights including theatrical rights, music rights, other rights including TV, internet, digital and home video streaming exclusively, under the Copyright Act, it apprehended that such illegal websites might exhibit pirated versions of the film soon after its release.

The web pages and websites which provide such links are multifarious and are disbursed all over the globe. Such websites are allowed to be viewed in India through various internet service providers such as the 37 arrayed in the plea, the company contended.