Lyca Productions on Monday denied allegations made on a Tamil website that it was involved in online movie piracy and threatened to sue the website.
The production house is currently bankrolling some of Tamil cinema’s biggest films such as actor Rajinikanth’s 2.0 and Kamal Haasan’s Indian 2 . It is also involved in distributing actor Rajinikanth’s Kaala , Mani Ratnam’s multi-starrer, Chekka Chivantha Vaanam , actor Suriya’s next with K.V. Anand among others.
Responding to allegations made in an article on the website Savukkuonline, Lyca Productions in a statement said that Lyca Group and Lyca Productions were not associated with either of the domain names – lycamovie.com and lycamovies.com (suspected piracy sites) — before they was shutdown on June 29, 2014.
“Following this, the domain name lycamovie.com was not renewed by the previous admin ‘Tamil Tamilan.’ Lyca group took the domain name Lycamovie.com on July 5, 2017. It could not acquire lycamovies.com as the domain name was renewed. It is common corporate practice to acquire domain names with prefixes and suffixes,” the release said.
‘A coverup’
Savukkuonline, however, disputed this claim and alleged that Lyca Productions was seeking to cover up its association with the piracy site.
Reacting to this, a Lyca official said, “A complaint was made by Pettigo Comercio Internacional Lda against lycamovie.com in September 2015, and the domain was ordered to come to our control. However, practically it was transferred to our control in July, 2017.”
The official further said, “The publication also claims that we lied about Lycamovie not having any piracy after it came to our control. We challenge anyone to show that this is the case, as it is absolutely untrue.”
