Breach

by Nirmal John

  Rajeev Kamineni, executive director of PVP Pictures, which produced the Telugu movie Eega a few years back, says the Tamil version of that movie was copied by shooting a camera print even before it released. The projector operator in a movie hall in Coimbatore was paid Rs 9,000 to set up a show in the middle of the night (a few hours before the official release), with the sound output going directly into the recorder rather than to the speakers lest it wake up people in the neighbourhood. The only thing different in the Baahubali 2 incident was that it was digital cinema, and they needed a hacker and access to the decryption key to copy the movie. Ultimately, these prints continue to be made in connivance with movie hall managers and projector operators, particularly in non-metro centres.

  Indore, Gwalior, the suburbs of Ahmedabad and Ghaziabad, over the years, according to industry sources, have gained notoriety as recording hubs. Movie halls in these cities have been subjected to repeated anti-piracy operations over the years. After his arrest, Pardesi revealed that he had tapped into syndicates based in Delhi and Ghaziabad to capture films which he could then upload on to his streaming platforms.

  While the movie industry has tried several ways to combat camcording, none has proved to be a magic pill. As a KPMG report, Media for the Masses: The Promise Unfolds, notes, ‘Even sophisticated technologies like the watermarking of prints, which allow producers or rights holders to monitor the usage and movement of each print across the globe, have not been able to stop piracy.’8 Sure, it was useful in the case of Baahubali 2, but producers often opt to not pursue such cases because of the expenses involved. That results in the pirates having a free hand in far too many instances.

  Once online, it is difficult to prevent the spread of content. John Doe orders (any court order against unknown persons) were for a while touted as a significant weapon for content owners. These orders allowed copyright holders to request Internet service providers (ISPs) to block pages that shared their content illegally.

  But indiscriminate blocking through John Doe orders opened up a battleground with activists for free Internet pitted against copyright holders. Take the example of the Tamil movie 3, from 2012.9 The producers of the movie asked the Madras High Court for a pre-emptive injunction against the illegal uploading of their film. An interim order to fifteen companies (including the major ISPs such as Airtel, Tata, Reliance and MTNL) and to ‘Ashok Kumar, unknown person’ was issued on 29 March of that year. The film released the next day to mixed reviews, and illegal copies of 3 were promptly up on most file-sharing sites, despite the court order.

  The Bombay High Court had issued similar John Doe orders earlier for other movies, and with similar effect. Internet service providers occasionally blocked some links, but the pirates always found ways around these blocks. Then in May of that year, owing to pressure from copyright holders, the ISPs decided to up their response a notch.

  This time, instead of blocking specific files or links, they blocked access to entire video streaming, file-sharing and BitTorrent sites, including Vimeo, Pastebin and The Pirate Bay. On 18 May 2012, visitors to these sites were greeted with a single line that said: ‘Access to this site has been blocked as per Court orders’.

  Social media sites were flooded with rants against the ISPs and the courts. Producers of movies like 3 came in for criticism too, particularly since the movie’s promo song (Why This Kolaveri Di) went viral on the Internet that was now being restricted at their behest. Blocking whole sites, said users, was censorship. Anonymous, an online community that fights issues related to Internet freedom, among others, got into the act. The group has no known leaders, but coordinate their reaction through chat forums like 4Chan.

  The biggest reason for the escalation of protests was that access to even legal file-sharing sites had been blocked. One frustrated user complained on Twitter: ‘I work with people who upload original content on Vimeo. How the f*** I’m supposed to work if govt. blocks Vimeo?’

  The discussions on the forums were all about finding ways to punish the various bodies responsible for blocking sites—the government, the courts, movie producers and their lawyers. Anonymous then coordinated the takedown of several websites (including those of the ministry of communications and IT, the Supreme Court, the Congress party, and even the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team). There were also demonstrations organized in several cities, where activists protesting Internet censorship took to the streets wearing Anonymous’s trademark Guy Fawkes masks.

  Even as the protests gathered momentum, online forums also offered ways around the blocks. Some directed users to browsers like Tor—The Onion Router—which, as mentioned earlier, helps users anonymously browse the internet without the ISPs detecting what they are viewing, while others told more tech-savvy users ways to become virtually invisible to ISPs by using virtual private networks or VPNs. That would help ensure it was business as usual for those who used BitTorrent and file-sharing sites.

  On 15 June 2012, the Madras High Court issued a clarification stating that John Doe orders were not meant to block entire sites. The ISPs lifted the blocks as quietly as they had imposed them. Activists, led by Anonymous, claimed victory.

  These days, John Doe orders remain a weapon used to fight piracy, but only to take down specific pages linked to copyrighted content. According to KPMG, in 2016, just one studio—Balaji Motion Pictures—secured John Doe orders ‘against 830 websites that were suspected of copyright infringement.’ But, as with most actions that try to fight in the vastness of the Internet, this too has not always proved effective.

  As the report notes, ‘While the effort is in the right direction, there are challenges in sustaining it on an ongoing basis. Given the number of films released per year, applying for John Doe order each time leads to wastage of valuable time and resources for both the industry and government. Additionally, although ISPs are able to block the identified rogue websites it becomes difficult to control online piracy as the blocked websites are soon compensated by new rogue websites.’

  The fight against piracy has been mired in other issues too. In September 2012, the Kerala police registered cases against 1,010 persons for illegally sharing the Malayalam movie Bachelor Party. The producers had hired Jadootech, a company which provided the police with the IP addresses (Internet Protocol, or the unique set of numbers that identifies each networked device) of all those who uploaded or downloaded the movie. That operation opened up a different can of worms.

  The tracking of IP addresses is an extremely contentious matter. Ameet Datta, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property at the Delhi-based law firm Saikrishna and Associates, says it is fair for a copyright owner to track IP ‘because the act of downloading that file is replacing the owner’s market’. Lawrence Liang, an IP lawyer with Alternative Law Forum in Bengaluru, who is interested in the politics of copyright, disagrees. ‘The right to privacy is a fundamental right and is more compelling than the right to copyright,’ he says. Liang says that if IPs are tracked, it should be made mandatory to get a court order before the details are handed over.10

  Simply put, while the blocking of infringing content on the Internet is welcomed by those who fight for the copyright holders, the more effective and ethical way to fight it would be to come together at the ground level through collaborative processes and institutions that are built to go by the letter of the law. It is imperative that the fight for copyright protection does not infringe on privacy. That is where arrests like Pardesi’s, an institutional action led by the cops, assume significance.

  * * *

  For most of the early part of this decade, it was peer-to-peer sharing through torrents that was at the centre of the fight between copyright holders and movie pirates. In this context, a United States Department of Justice announcement that came out on 20 July 2016 was celebrated as a huge victory for the entertainment industry.

  Artem Vaulin, a shadowy thirty-year-old who allegedly owned KickAss Torrents, the largest peer-to-peer file sharing website in the wor
ld, was arrested in Poland after an international law enforcement operation. According to a statement put out by the US Department of Justice, ‘Artem Vaulin was allegedly running a worldwide digital piracy website that stole more than $1 billion in profits from the US entertainment industry.’

  KickAss Torrents, the entity he created, was at its heart a directory of links that facilitated peer-to-peer sharing of large files using the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent allowed for easy and efficient sharing as compared with downloading from a single user; this technology allowed files to be broken into many smaller segments. A user could simultaneously download these files from various sources and stitch them all together using a torrent client.

  The underlying technology is brilliant, and it heralded a breakthrough in how large files could be transmitted over the Internet. Unfortunately, it soon became synonymous with piracy on the Internet as copyrighted content formed the bulk of what was being shared around, more efficiently than ever before. This led to the proliferation of sites that were essentially search engines for the torrent universe. KickAss Torrents, which was started by Vaulin—who also went by the name Tirm—was the biggest of them all and was particularly noted for its user experience.

  The website, launched in 2008, had a huge trove of links to every conceivable form of entertainment, including movies, games, television programmes, music and other electronic media. It did have large amounts of non-copyrighted content, but clearly the big draw was the sharing of infringed IP, particularly movies.

  It was the most popular site of its kind and became the sixty-ninth most frequently visited website on the Internet, with more than 50 million unique visitors per month, according to the traffic tracking service Alexa. That is an astounding number and rivals that of some of the biggest websites on the planet.

  That kind of popularity had a direct impact on KickAss Torrent’s ability to make money. Vaulin and others behind KickAss Torrents are believed to have earned millions of dollars in online advertising revenue by monetizing all that traffic. According to documents filed against Vaulin in the United States, Siteprice.org, which estimates the advertising revenue that websites generate, put the figure earned by KickAss Torrents at approximately $16,967,865 annually. That is nearly $17 million a year.

  Ukrainian citizen Vaulin’s arrest was the culmination of a multi-year investigation involving law enforcement agencies across many jurisdictions. Jared Der-Yeghiayan, a United States Department of Homeland Security special agent, who was earlier part of the team that brought down the immensely popular dark web black market Silk Road, was instrumental in the KickAss Torrents takedown too.

  Der-Yeghiayan and a team of investigators from multiple law enforcement agencies from around the world stitched the fabric that led to the arrest, using information gleaned from a variety of sources, including email service providers, hosting services, Internet payment systems and iTunes. They used the lure of money and posed as potential advertisers to entice Vaulin to leave a trail of money that ultimately helped them build the evidence that put him behind bars.

  With the arrest of Vaulin, KickAss Torrents was taken down. But it didn’t stay down for long. As long as there is demand, supply will find a way. Those who use technology for nefarious purposes always find another way, and in late 2016, KickAss Torrents resurfaced.

  TorrentFreak, an online publication that shares news about copyright, privacy and file-sharing, claims that the relaunch was masterminded by those who were formerly with the original entity. ‘A large group of original KickassTorrent staffers has launched a reincarnation of the infamous torrent site, hoping to restore it to its former glory. The new site uses a fresh and secure database, but the look and feel of the platform remains the same,’ the report said.

  The report quoted the new KickAss Torrents—KAT—team: ‘The majority of our original Staff, Admins and Moderation team joined us after Kat.cr went down—which is something we’re very proud of. This shows the loyalty, dedication and real love for KAT that we all share.’ A petition to free Vaulin has made its way to occupy pride of place on the new KickAss Torrents page. The petition, linked from change.org, reads as follows.

  This morning the founder of kat.cr was arrested in Poland. It’s another attack on freedom and rights of internet users from all around the world. This is unacceptable!

  In the world where terrorist attacks is a monthly issue, where global corporations are swimming in money and millions dying because of diseases and hunger every single year, do you really think torrents deserve attention, money and human resources you spend on them? Do you really think it’s the most important thing on our hands right now?

  Our freedom to share is the human right which Artem Vaulin has been providing to millions of users. By arresting him our rights are violated.

  Thus we want Artem Vaulin to set free and to be discharged!

  They haven’t succeeded yet with their demand to set Vaulin free, and the newer version of the site is also not as popular as it used to be. Alexa rankings of the new iteration of Kickass Torrents suggest it hasn’t quite hit the heights of popularity of its former self, but its very existence is an indication that while the government and enforcement machinery globally may be fighting piracy, there is some way to go before they can claim victory over torrents.

  The other reason why they haven’t succeeded is that the biggest of movies can be found on the Internet a mere hours after they are released. At times they land up there even before the movies are out in the movie halls. They may not be getting downloaded through torrents but are being streamed. One of the major reasons for the reduced popularity of KickAss Torrents and the peer-to-peer piracy ecosystem is the rapid rise of streaming.

  A study11 by Muso, a company that develops products for content protection, states, ‘Nearly three-quarter of all visits to film & TV specific piracy sites in 2015 used web streaming as their method of consuming illegal content. This highlights a clear piracy audience trend change away from content “ownership” using P2P/Torrents or web downloads.’

  High-speed Internet availability on smartphones through the fast adaptation of 4G, combined with a voracious appetite for content, especially when it is free, means that the shift to streaming sites is happening right as India and its 1.3 billion people are coming online in a big way. Estimates put the number of sites that illegally share Indian movie content at 14,000. That number, if left unchecked, would only grow.

  * * *

  The thirty-sixth page of the fifty-page affidavit12 that Der-Yeghiayan, the US Homeland Security special agent, filed to implicate Vaulin, mentions a request that KickAss Torrents received from the Andhra Pradesh Film Chamber of Commerce, an industry body based in Hyderabad.

  On 6 August 2011, Vaulin received a forwarded email from a KAT employee. The mail was originally sent by the AP Film Chamber to KickAss Torrents requesting the data of KAT users who uploaded copyright infringing material. The subject line was ‘Ignore?’, to which Vaulin replied, ‘Of course.’

  The anti-piracy cell of the Hyderabad-based AP Film Chamber, led by Rajkumar Akella, which has fought against theft of IP on behalf of the Telugu film industry for the last many years, had sent these requests. Movies like Nanna, Kanchana, ATM, Sega and Naa Peru Shiva had released around that time, and torrent links to these movies had promptly popped up on KickAss Torrents.

  Akella, a bespectacled man in his early forties, has made it his life mission to fight piracy. He has been throwing punches at the piracy ecosystem for a fair few years and has emerged as one of the central figures in the fight against theft of entertainment IP in the country. It was Akella who was at the heart of the police action in the case of Baahubali and Baahubali 2.

  Telugu films are increasingly in the vanguard of the multilingual Indian movie landscape, outspending and outearning the biggest of Hindi films with fare like Baahubali. Those in the business of nipping piracy say the drive for bigger and better has extended to how active the Telugu industry has been in fighting pirac
y.

  Now in his forties, Akella doesn’t exactly fit the description of a guy who has won awards for his work combating the theft of intellectual property. With a thick mop of black hair covering most of his forehead and a thin spectacle frame perched on his nose, he looks more like your family doctor or an earnest bank manager.

  Akella wears multiple hats. As an entrepreneur he is the co-founder of the digital content production platform iDream Media, which works on short-duration content in regional languages. As the managing director, theatrical, India, of the global media measurement and analytics firm comScore, he is an authority on film revenues and box office collections in the country. He is also an executive member of the governing council of the Telugu Film Chamber. But it is in his role of fighting piracy that he has become something of a hero in the anti-IP infringement circles.

  Akella’s fight against piracy started when he was in his late teens. At the dawn of the 1990s, after his dad passed away, he quit school and moved with his family from Vijayawada, now in Andhra Pradesh, to Aurangabad in Maharashtra before moving to Hyderabad. There he floated between odd jobs and finally started working with the Bengaluru-based music label Lahiri Music Company as an assistant in their tiny sales office in Hyderabad. His manager quit a few months after he joined, and the responsibility of running the small office fell on the enterprising young Akella. He managed well enough in this role and convinced his bosses in Bengaluru to give him an extended run at managing the territory.

  Akella is a huge fan of Chiranjeevi, an immensely popular actor in Telugu movies. Akella’s eyes twinkle when he says, ‘he used to dance like a dream’. When the audio rights for Chiranjeevi’s movie Gang Leader were up for grabs, Akella wanted Lahiri Music Company to buy the rights to distribute it. The bosses sitting in Bengaluru relented, but on certain conditions.

  Akella had to sell 50,000 cassettes—this was before the era of CDs—and that too, on day one. His remuneration would be tied to the sales of the cassettes. For each cassette he sold, he would be given Rs 1.20, but if there were any left unsold, his bosses would deduct Rs 10 per cassette from his overall earnings. That meant that Akella would make Rs 1,25,000 if he sold one lakh cassettes, but would lose almost Rs 1 lakh out of his earnings if he sold only 90,000. A rough deal.