The Delhi High Court has in an interim order restrained 64 websites and four private radio channels from illegally broadcasting the 2019 Cricket World Cup matches.
Justice J.R. Midha gave the direction on the plea of Channel 2 Group Corporation, which claims to have acquired the audio coverage rights from ICC Business Corporation FZ LLC, the organiser of ICC Men’s World Cup 2019.
The Cricket World Cup 2019 started from May 30 and will continue till July 14.
The High Court also directed search engines “to take down/delete from their search results pages, listings of websites/ URLs which are infringing upon the plaintiff’s [Channel 2 Group] copyright and broadcast reproduction rights, as and when notified by the plaintiff”.
Channel 2 Group had in its plea claimed that it had entered into an agreement with ICC Business Corporation to transmit audio coverage of matches and warm-up matches whether live, delayed, highlights or report in all languages.
The company claimed it had the exclusive right to make World Cup audio material available for reception anywhere in the world, including radio broadcasts, audio streaming/broadcasts to mobile phones, audio transmission on a digital TV channel.
‘Abuse of audio rights’
It moved the High Court against “likely abuse” of its exclusive audio rights by various interested persons. It quoted past instances of infringement of similar rights that caused considerable financial loss to the owner.
“Due to the unique nature of online piracy and the unstructured nature of the Internet, enforcement of rights against such pirating websites is a time consuming, mammoth task,” the plea said.
“The pirated websites can switch from one domain name to other. Further, most of the times, such websites hide under the garb of privacy as a result of which it is difficult to pin down the allegations against such website owners,” it added.
Taking note of the plea, the High Court said it was satisfied that the company required an interim protection.
The court also issued notice to the websites, radio channels, Internet and telecom service providers and the Centre seeking their replies before the next date of hearing on September 4.
