Filesharing and storage sites blocked in India for 2014 FIFA World Cup still inaccessible

Many file sharing, storage and torrent sites that where blocked for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, as still blocked by multiple ISP’s: MediaNama has checked on MTNL (Delhi), Reliance Communications (Netconnect). Among the sites blocked are storage sites like Mega.co.nz and uploadsat.com, torrent sites like thepiratebay.org, torrenthound.com, limetorrents.com, torrentfunk.com, torrents.net, among several others. Some of these sites might work on one ISP but not the other. Please do leave a comment with a list of sites not working on your ISP (and add details of your ISP and City).

The websites were blocked following a John Doe order issued by the Delhi High Court, and a list of from Sony owned Multi Screen Media (which had licensed rights for showing the World Cup in India), following which 472 websites, including Google Docs, Google Video and Google’s URL shortener goo.gl were blocked in the country. The list was later revised to 219 websites after ISP’s appealed.

Emails sent to Sai Krishna Rajagopal, who represented Multi Screen Media in the case, as well as to MSM’s PR agency (Adfactors PR), seven days ago, is yet to receive a response. The questions we asked:

1. The court order did not specify a date for the removal of blocks. Now that the FIFA World Cup 2014 has ended, has Multi Screen Media issued any notice to ISP’s and telecom operators, asking them to remove the website blocks?
2. Has Multi Screen Media used the John Doe order for getting any site, other than those with FIFA World Cup 2014 content, blocked?
3. Why were file-storing sites such as mega.co.nz, which do not necessarily have content that violate MSM’s copyright, blocked?
4. When was the last notice to a stakeholder, on the basis of this court order, issued?
5. Does MSM intend to use the john doe order for blocks in the future, now that the FIFA World Cup 2014 has ended?
6. Till when does Multi Screen Media intend to issue notices for the blocking of websites, on the basis of this court order?

We’ll update in case we hear from them.

Our take on this situation

No sunset clause for a John Doe order means that ISP’s in India can continue to block these sites, even though the FIFA World Cup is over. In our opinion, a court judgment should have taken this into account, and the order should have instructed that the blocks be removed after the FIFA World Cup.

The order also states that “Defendant no.40 is directed to scrutinize the list forthwith and in case as per their knowledge and information any of the website so mentioned in the list includes a legitimate website the defendant will inform the plaintiff and barring such website all other websites as per the list provided by the plaintiff today shall be injuncted as per the order dated 23.6.2014.” That puts the onus on Defendent no. 40 (probably an ISP or the ISP association) to get legitimate websites now unblocked.

We’re not sure if MSM could or can use this order to get more websites blocked; we’ve not received a response from them.

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