Shemaroo Entertainment has obtained a John Doe order (pdf) from the Bombay High Court, aimed at stopping piracy of its latest release ‘Hunterrr’. According to the Shemaroo, it came across several links online which let users download ‘Hunterrr’ for free, prior to release. While these links were dormant then, the company claims “these links will be activated immediately after the release of the movie”. Shemaroo has named five multi-system-operators as defendants, along with other ‘unknown persons that are likely to infringe the copyright’, referred to as "John Doe" globally, and "Ashok Kumar" in India. The court has issued an interim injunction for now and will place this Motion for hearing in May. John Doe orders allow movie studios to push ISPs to indiscriminately block access to video sharing, filesharing and torrenting sites. As we mentioned before when a John Doe order was issued for Gangs of Wasseypur, courts need to take into consideration the misuse of John Doe orders by movie studios and ISPs to block legitimate access to websites, instead of getting specific links taken down. For example, the John Doe order in case of the order received from the Madras High Court, for the films 3 and Dammu, led to the blocking of several websites including Dailymotion, Vimeo and The Pirate Bay (a complete list here). Other than this, the Delhi High Court, the Mumbai High court and the Madras High Court have all granted John Doe orders for blocking websites in the past. Interestingly in September last…
