Golden age of online piracy slowly vanishing
With `Torrents’ being blocked in India now, much furore has broken out as the downloading of music, soap operas and movies has ground to a halt. The move has also been billed as an attempt to curb cyber freedom.
Exploiting this scenario are Anti-Piracy squads, who barge into corporate offices and forcefully examine computer databases. They literally hunt for illegal downloads and demand hefty sums from those who have been involved in the activity to prevent a cyber-crime booking.
This unique post of a respondent from Mumbai talks of a group of five plain clothesmen or Anti-piracy officials, demanding the right to examine all systems in an office. This, with no prior permission or warrant, resulted in the complete stalling of a working day with officials scanning them for freely downloaded content.
The threat to charge each and every minute illegality as a major cyber crime and possible confiscation of all computer systems housing the data required to carry out a business resulted in the company shelling out a huge bribe of Rs. 2,00,000 to the visitors. (http://ipaidabribe.com/bribe-central/extortion-name-copyright-protection).
Cyber regulation has always been a topic of much controversy and people have preferred to download content for free to be able to watch non-censored content at their own convenience. Officials have smartly managed to make money off it.
By Manishka Soorya