The Delhi High Court has granted a John Doe order to Fox Star Studio and Phantom Films, aimed at stopping the pirating of its movie ‘Bombay Velvet’, reports NDTV. The court has not yet uploaded the order to its website. The order will allow blocking of known defendants and unknown defendants (John Doe) that are “hosting, streaming, making available for viewing, downloading, providing access to… or sharing without authorisation on their website, in any manner, the film Bombay Velvet.” According to the High Court, the studios made a convincing case that without such an injunction, ‘irreparable’ financial damages would be caused to the studios. The DoT and DeitY were also notified by the court to ensure compliance by ISPs. The Delhi High court had issued a similar order (pdf) earlier this month, granting a John Doe order to Multi Screen Media for its film Piku. The suit listed various defendants including Vimeo, a website not known for hosting pirated content. As torrentfreak points out, there are several other issues with the order. For example, it lists Pirate Bay’s .org domain even though the site is currently operating from a .se domain. Similarly, the domain name of KickassTorrents is both outdated and misspelled as kickasstoreents.com. 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…
