Disney gets 37 Rogue Websites Pulled Down
After ordering the removal of a series of URLs and mirror websites that evited blocking last April, Delhi High Court again pulled off websites dealing in digital piracy. Last month, Disney got 118 rogue websites blocked that streamed its contents illegally. Along with the defendant Kimcartoon.to and Ors., websites such as KissCartoon, KissAnime, and GoGoAnime were also targeted for streamlining Disney shows and cartoons. And included in the lawsuit as co-defendants were the Department of Communication (DoT) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information (MEITY).
The lawsuit was filed for the streaming of original and copyright content created by the plaintiff, Disney Enterprises, without any prior authorization from them. On carefully analyzing the content on the websites, the single bench of Justice Rajiv Shakdar restrained the defendants from ‘hosting, streamlining, reproducing, distributing, making available to the public and/or communicating to the public or facilitating the same on their websites through the internet in any manner whatsoever any cinematograph work, content, program, and show in which the plaintiffs have copyright’.
This decision was taken by the court to protect Disney from the irreparable damages to its commerce and statutory interest. Being concerned at the prevalence of piracy, the request of the interim injunction was also granted by the Delhi court to protect the originality and creativity of their content. The role of DoT and MEITY was labeled as an error of ‘description and not intent’. They have been ordered to block the websites with immediate effect. The next hearing is scheduled for 1st September 2020.
India has not seen a firm crackdown on digital piracy before 2015. With such cases gaining significance in number and action, a firm censure is expected on what we are shown on the Internet. Original content creators can sigh in relief at the strong and dynamic judgments that the courts are passing on piracy and infringement of copyrights.
