Jana Nayagan ‘Downloads’ Under Scanner ?

Thalapathy Vijay’s last outing Jana Nayagan is the latest film to fall prey to the piracy menace. What is more shocking is that the entire footage has been leaked online even before its theatrical release amid the team’s prolonged battle with the censor board. This unfortunate incident has sent shockwaves across industries and triggered collective voice to take stringent action against the culprits. 

Meanwhile, KVN Productions has issued a statement that criminal proceedings would soon be initiated against the offenders behind this entire piracy chaos. In its official statement, it warned that downloading, viewing, storing, forwarding, sharing or circulating the leaked content through any forms of social media platforms would invite strict legal action. 

Meanwhile, the film’s anti-piracy partner, an erode based company WarX is reportedly trying to trace the original culprit who gained unauthorised access into the full print of the film and leaked it online. Interestingly, the firm is also taking steps to preserve publicly available peer-to-peer torrent traffic logs for the film. This means that the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of individuals downloading the film through torrents would come under the scanner for further action. 

Unlike direct download sites, torrents reveal the IP address of downloaders and also who upload the file back after their download to anyone accessing the same file through trackers. In countries like USA and Germany, internet service providers (ISPs) and telecom operators cooperate with copyright holders and help in sending notices to individual customers whose IP addresses are recorded in such exercises. But, it has never happened in India so far.

But, WarX is reportedly claiming that the latest guidelines issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting a few months back has the provision to implicate those who download copyright content are liable for legal action as per the IT Act 2000. While is very difficult to initiate legal proceedings against those who downloaded the film outside India, it is still unclear if the production house can use this data and take any legal course or not. 

Even if the law permits action against those who download copyright content, it is not practically possible to issue legal notices to all those who have accessed the leaked footage online. The damage has already been done due to the inordinate delay and the leakage of full film even it is for a brief period. 

So, even the team finds out the offenders and those who downloaded the leaked film, it would hardly make any difference to theatrical prospects of Jana Nayagan. But, it could set a strong legal precedent for Indian film industry.