In what is billed as a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country, the anti-piracy cell of the Kerala Police has registered cases against 1,010 persons for illegally uploading or downloading on the Internet the Malayalam movie Bachelor Party .
This includes a Keralite engineering student based in Vaashi, Navi Mumbai, and the Coimbatore-based website Tamil Rockers , a press note issued here on Saturday by the anti-piracy cell said.
Over the last 10 days, 30,000 persons were found to have seen
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An investigation by the anti-piracy cell revealed that the illegal viewing of the film was done by persons based in the U.S., the U.K., the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Ireland, the Philippines, China, South Africa, Uganda, Algeria, Botswana, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan. Within the country, the illegal viewings were reported from New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Rajasthan, Lucknow, Kapurthala, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, Puducherry, Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Ernakulam, Kozhikode, Kottayam, and Palakkad.
The CD/DVD/mobile phone/Internet/memory card rights for Bachelor Party were secured by Sajithan, who owns the Thrissur-based firm Movie Channel. The CDs of the movie were brought out by this company on August 19, 2012. Within two days, Mr. Sajithan submitted a complaint to the anti-piracy cell against the site Tamil Rockers and against 16 IP addresses from where the film had been illegally uploaded to the Net. The subsequent investigation was carried out by a team of police officials headed by the anti-piracy nodal officer and Inspector General of Police B. Sandhya.
A month ago, the CDs of the films
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Investigation by the anti-piracy cell of the Kerala police is currently on in 10 cases of Internet misuse. About 70 cases of copyright infringement have been registered in Kerala and outside and about 100 persons have been arrested in this connection.
The illegal sharing of Bachelor Party on the Net comes at a time when the arrest of 15 persons in April for pirating movies from theatres and the consequent non-availability of pirated CDs had led to a substantial increase in the government’s income from theatres, the press note added.