Hathway blocking torrent sites?

[LFC18]

I live in Mumbai and I am using broadband service provided by Hathaway. Till some weeks before I was able to access the torrent sites to download the ebooks that I needed for my college studies. But now from past two days I am noticing that these sites cannot be accessed. At first I thought that it must be down for purpose of maintenance. But I don’t think that any website remains down for maintenance for around weeks. I tried other websites to download the required Ebook, but other websites too are inaccessible. I tried around five to six different websites, but none of them were accessible. After searching on internet for reason of this problem, I found news which said that ISPs are blocking torrent sites. I can’t understand why Hathaway is blocking torrent sites, is it compulsory for every ISP?

[Baisakhi]

This move to block the torrent sites have been initiated by Madras High Court to block various websites that provide torrents for downloading content from internet. Not just torrent sites have been blocked, but many file sharing websites and video sharing websites too have been blocked. This harsh move has been taken by the Madras High court to avoid the copyright violations in case of the Tamil movie ‘3’. Yes, it is the same movie which stars Dhanush and Shruti Hasan and features the superhit song ‘Why this Kolaveri Di?’ The producer of this film doesn’t want even the slightest hint of this film to be leaked to the public. This blocking of websites has spread all over India in every state and every ISP has followed the pattern. This has hampered the working of many people as they couldn’t access the file sharing websites to retrieve the stored data from other PC.

[Kirt]

I think that this is a right move taken by the Madras court to block the file sharing websites and torrent websites. As an amateur filmmaker, I can understand what a producer and the director of the film feels when parts of his/her film are leaked. In recent times we have seen that after release of any new film, within hours its pirated copies are made available on internet by use of file sharing websites or websites providing torrent links to the pirated copies of the movies. Due to this online piracy, the film industry has lost crores of rupees in past. People just download the pirated copy; they watch themselves and circulate it among their friends. So this is how a film loses around 10 to 15 viewers by just one download. It is a good move by Madras High Court and I support it fully.

[Farzana]

As an amateur filmmaker, I can understand what a producer and the director of the film feels when parts of his/her film are leaked.

I understand that the film industry was suffering losses due to illegal distribution of a film on internet. But this move by Madras High Court to block the torrent websites and file sharing websites has also affected the profession of many other fields other than film industry. Now just take my example, I am a cartoon illustrator. I develop the sketches at my office and store them on the file sharing website. So when I visit my client, I don’t need to carry anything, not even a pen drive. I just access the desired file sharing site from his office and demonstrate my sketches. But now due to this move, I have to carry my sketches around in my bag with fear of them getting spoiled. Madras high court should understand that these websites were not just used to spread the pirated copies of the film, but were also being used for professional and academic use.

[Sudhamay]

After few days of this censorship on internet, it came into news that Madras High Court had requested for blocking of certain WebPages that had content related to the movie requiring protection against copyright violations. But the ISPs have banned the whole domain of that site. Many people protested against this move, but no action has yet been taken in this issue. To protest against this unwanted censorship, international hackers group ‘Anonymous’ hacked the servers of Reliance and MTNL. They also carried out live protests on streets in some cities, but still nothing has changed. I think that this kind of censorship is not justified. Government should understand that not every person uses these sites to share pirated copies of the movies or to leak confidential data online. There are many people who use it for their good use.