Delhi High Court restricts websites from illegally streaming the contents of Warner Bros. studios
Delhi High Court (“Court”) on August 5, 2019 passed an order in the matter of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. http://www2.series9.to restricting the web platform from illegally streaming the contents of Warner Bros. studios. The Court also directed the Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) to block the URLs of these websites.
Warner Bros. Entertainment (“Plaintiff”) sent legal notice to the defendants to stop streaming the contents owned by the Plaintiff, but the defendants continued to stream. The Plaintiffs then filed the petition for permanent injunction and rendition of accounts and damages against the defendants which enable users to view by download movies, television programs and other audio video contents and make copies of the same content.
The Plaintiff claimed that the defendants by hosting and streaming the Plaintiff’s original product, is making it public without any authorization. The Plaintiffs also added that the defendants stream the contents of other 3rd party studios such as UTV Software, Star India, Disney, Paramount etc. Plaintiff claimed that since the content are works of visual recording and include sound recordings, they qualify as “cinematograph film” as provided under Section 2(f) of the Copyright Act, 1957 (“Act”) and hence shall be protected under the Act.
The Court agreed with the arguments presented by the Plaintiff and opined that a prima facie case along with balance of convenience is made out in favour of the Plaintiff. The Court also noted that if the injunction is not granted then the Plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm.
The Court, hence, directed the ISPs to block the websites, IP address and URLs of the defendants. Furthermore, the Court directed the Department of Telecommunications and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to suspend the domain name registration of the defendants.
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The Court re-affirms the position of law in cases related to illegal streaming of contents of studios on unauthorized websites. In most of the cases of illegal streaming of studio contents, prima facie case is made out in favour of the owner of the content and since they will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is not granted, the courts do grant injunction against such unauthorized websites.
Earlier in April, 2019, The Court in another case related to online copyright infringement crafted a new relief of “dynamic injunction”, which means that if there is an injunction granted against a website then the same injunction can be extended to similar “mirror/redirect/alphanumeric” website. Most of the times when a website is blocked for illegal streaming of content, a new website is registered with minor changes in the name of the website which makes it cumbersome for the copyright owner to seek remedy every time in the court of law. This is why name of the website is provided as a party name in such cases to identify which websites infringe the copyright and apply “dynamic injunction” if a new website with similar name is created.
Disclaimer: This post has been prepared for informational purposes only. The information/or observations contained in this post does not constitute legal advice and should not be acted upon in any specific situation without seeking proper legal advice from a practicing attorney.