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In an attempt to prevent pirates from downloading their latest movie Singham, Reliance Entertainment came up with a rather unconventional anti-piracy strategy. The company managed to obtain a so-called John Doe order from the Indian High Court, which they are now sending to various torrent sites that could potentially link to a pirated version of the movie.
Last week millions of Indians were shaken up by what appeared to be a mass anti-piracy action from the Government. Many of the country’s leading Internet providers had blocked access to a wide range of file-hosting services including Mediafire, MegaUpload and Hotfile.
It turned out that the ISPs in question were responding to a court order under which they had to block access to the Reliance Entertainment movie Singham. Responding to this request, some ISPs overreacted and blocked entire sites, rather than just the single movie.
Aside from asking ISPs to serve as the copyright police, the makers of Singham also approached many torrent sites directly over the last days. Armed with a “John Doe” order from the Indian High Court, they are going after all sites that could potentially link to pirated versions of their film.
Since the order is not targeted at any site in particular (but at anonymous offenders), Reliance Entertainment can simply send the order to whoever they wish.
One of the torrent sites that was approached by the lawyers of Reliance Entertainment is BitSnoop. In an email they sent the owner of the torrent site a copy of the court order, preventing him from making the movie Singham available.
