The Bombay high court has said it is inaccurate to suggest that merely viewing an illicit copy of a film is a punishable offence under the Copyright Act.
"The offence is not in viewing, but in making a prejudicial distribution, a public exhibition or letting for sale or hire without appropriate permission copyright-protected material," Justice Gautam Patel said.
He asked Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to drop the line "'viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating' a particular film is a penal offence" from the 'error message' and directed them to display a more generic message on URLS to be blocked for infringement of copyright.
He made the observation in an order last month when it was pointed out that an ISP had displayed a message that had sent viewers in a tizzy.
The HC had recently directed ISPs to block several URLs on a plea by producers of the film Dishoom against piracy. The court also directed ISPs to place an 'error message' on the blocked sites as a measure to ensure genuine e-commerce sites are not affected.
No comments:
Post a Comment