The Madras High Court has granted some relief to Internet users in India, courtesy an appeal filed by a consortium of Internet Service Providers asking for specificity in complaints of infringing content, instead of a John Doe/Ashok Kumar order. The order, issued on the 15th of June 2012, of which MediaNama has a copy, states: "The order of interim injunction dated 25/04/2012 is hereby clarified that the interim injunction is granted only in respect of a particular URL where the infringing movie is kept and not in respect of the entire website. Further, the applicant is directed to inform about the particulars of URL where the interim movie is kept within 48 hours." Readers might have noticed that, over the weekend, Indian ISPs enabled access to sites like Vimeo, The Pirate Bay, among others. These sites had been previously blocked because of a John Doe order granted to Copyright Labs (for the movie Dhammu). The John Doe order, against a nameless entity, which allowed studios to tell ISPs to block user access to many video sharing and torrent websites pre-emptively, to prevent uploading of content. The clarification from the Madras High Court came following a representation to the court by a consortium of ISPs, pointing out the John Doe order has also led to legitimate content being disabled, and they can still block access to infringing content when informed by the studios. Copyright Labs had also given to the ISPs, a list of several URLs with pirated content. On condition…
