Downloading free? The cops are coming

Source: DNA dated 3rd April 2013

The police recently warned and let off an IT professional, attached with a company in Vikhroli, for what thousands do surreptitiously every day.

He was downloading movies from a torrent site on his office computer. Most internet junkies would never anticipate that downloading songs and movies from torrents can invite a policeman home. But that is beginning to happen.

Soon after the incident last week, the company emailed its employees asking them to stay off torrent sites.

With a rising number of complaints, mostly from owners of copyrighted songs and movies, the cyber crime cell and the newly-formed social media laboratory have been monitoring internet users with large data downloads.

"There have been several such complaints recently... Only a person with a copyright can be a complainant,” Himanshu Roy, joint commissioner (crime), said. “This is a cognisable offence under the Copyrights Act.” In the Vikhroli case, too, the complainant was the copyright holder.

For those who do not know, downloading from a torrent site has always been illegal. “It is akin to buying pirated DVDs from a CD seller; only this is done within the safe confines of your house,” Vijay Mukhi, cyber security expert, said. Not many people are aware of the fact that using a torrent site is illegal,
he said.

Mukhi said action can be taken against an accused under the Copyrights Act, the IPC, or the IT Act. “Section 66 of the IT Act is very elaborate and covers several offences of similar nature... It is not only your office machine that is under the scanner, but also your personal computer.”

Asked how exactly the Mumbai police would keep track of who is downloading what from the internet, Roy said: “We have a team of cyber experts and we have started a social media lab. We track trends and with the help of the internet service providers, we conduct random checks on the content that is being downloaded from certain sites.”