This post was first published on 5th July, 2012.
John Doe orders are generally issued against someone whose identity is unknown. This is usually served to online service providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to obtain the identity of the author of an anonymous post.
In the current instance John Doe orders were obtained by ‘Reliance Big Entertainment Pvt’ to block websites containing file sharing links, such as ‘Pirate Bay’ and ‘Vimeo’. Recently, the producers of the Tamil films “3” and “Dammu” had obtained similar orders. However, in these cases the court had granted interim injunction not just against the links which were found to infringe the copyrights of the movie but the entire website.
Further, even ‘Viacom 18 Motions Pictures’ obtained such an order, which created a lot of spur among the Internet activists group which resulted in hacking of government websites and of famous production houses.
On an appeal by a group of ISPs the Madras High Court modified the order holding that the content owners must provide specific websites to the ISPs through which their copyright material was illegitimately shared so that they could be blocked.
In the present case, however, the court ruled that the interim injunction was granted only against those particular links infringing the copyrights of the owner and not against the entire website and further directed the applicant to provide information towards such links within 48 hours. With this order coming into effect, most of the previously blocked websites are accessible again except for the popular ‘Pirate Bay’.
To conclude, we can see that obtaining John Doe orders are quite an effective method towards fighting piracy and preventing misuse of modern technology towards copyright infringements thus making it a blessing towards the protection of IP.
By Srividya
John Doe orders are generally issued against someone whose identity is unknown. This is usually served to online service providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to obtain the identity of the author of an anonymous post.
In the current instance John Doe orders were obtained by ‘Reliance Big Entertainment Pvt’ to block websites containing file sharing links, such as ‘Pirate Bay’ and ‘Vimeo’. Recently, the producers of the Tamil films “3” and “Dammu” had obtained similar orders. However, in these cases the court had granted interim injunction not just against the links which were found to infringe the copyrights of the movie but the entire website.
Further, even ‘Viacom 18 Motions Pictures’ obtained such an order, which created a lot of spur among the Internet activists group which resulted in hacking of government websites and of famous production houses.
On an appeal by a group of ISPs the Madras High Court modified the order holding that the content owners must provide specific websites to the ISPs through which their copyright material was illegitimately shared so that they could be blocked.
In the present case, however, the court ruled that the interim injunction was granted only against those particular links infringing the copyrights of the owner and not against the entire website and further directed the applicant to provide information towards such links within 48 hours. With this order coming into effect, most of the previously blocked websites are accessible again except for the popular ‘Pirate Bay’.
To conclude, we can see that obtaining John Doe orders are quite an effective method towards fighting piracy and preventing misuse of modern technology towards copyright infringements thus making it a blessing towards the protection of IP.
By Srividya
Image Source/Attribution here (Governed by Creative Commons License CC BY – SA
2.0)
