October was the month India’s anti-piracy machinery went industrial. Sixty-three websites permanently killed for six Hollywood studios. Pre-release blocking orders for Jailer 2 and for Shivarajkumar’s Bail on the same day from the same judge. A 72-hour domain deactivation order for Drishyam. Three courts, three models, and in every single one of them the defendants did not turn up.
The permanent one
On 7 October, Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav of the Delhi High Court decreed Universal City Studios LLC & Ors v 123MoviesHub.tc & Ors, CS(COMM) 116/2022, and permanently restrained 63 websites, including the 123MoviesHub and Putlocker domains, from infringing the plaintiffs’ copyrights. The plaintiffs are Universal, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Columbia Pictures, Netflix Studios, Paramount and Disney Enterprises. Internet service providers were directed to block them.
What makes it notable is how it was decided. LiveLawBiz and MediaNama both report that the Court took the summary route under Order XIII-A of the Code of Civil Procedure, holding that the suit could be decided on the pleadings and documents without oral evidence, because the defendants never appeared and never contested anything. Requiring evidence, the Court reasoned, “would merely repeat the contents of the plaint and serve no useful purpose”.
Two limits worth noting, because they are the parts that will matter later. The plaintiffs may bring in mirror, redirect and alphanumeric domains, but only on a proper application, so this is not an open-ended dynamic injunction. And the decree benefits each studio only for works in which it actually holds copyright, which sounds obvious and is the kind of line that stops a blocking order being used as a general-purpose weapon. MediaNama also records the Court observing that the rogue-website factors are “illustrative and not exhaustive” and “do not apply to intermediaries”.
The pre-release ones, including a Kannada film
On 13 October, two days before Jailer 2 opened, Justice P.B. Balaji of the Madras High Court granted Sun TV Network an interim injunction in O.A. Nos. 1130, 1131 and 4432 of 2026 in C.S.(COMM DIV) No. 284 of 2026, covering the Tamil version and the dubs. Internet service providers were told to block identified piracy sites along with mirror, redirect and alphanumeric variants notified by Sun TV or its named anti-piracy agents, Aiplex Software and Block X Technologies. Notice is returnable on 10 November. The Court’s language: the plaintiff “is entitled to an interim order as prayed for, having made out a prima facie case”.
The same judge, the same day, granted a parallel injunction for Bail, starring Shivarajkumar, on the suit of KVN Productions LLP of Bengaluru. Two separate suits, one per production house.
That is a Kannada production going to a Chennai court for the same pre-release shield a Rajinikanth film gets, and it is the healthiest development in this whole story. Blocking orders have historically been a tool for people who can afford a Delhi or Mumbai IP practice. A Bengaluru producer using the same mechanism on the same day as Sun Pictures is the machinery working for somebody other than the giants.
And on 1 October, Justice Kaurav had already granted Digital18 Media an ad interim ex parte order for Drishyam: The Conclusion in Digital18 Media (P) Ltd v SSRMovies.style, reported at 2026 SCC OnLine Del 7854, requiring identified domains to be suspended, blocked, disabled or deactivated within 72 hours of notice.
What this adds up to
A pre-release blocking order is now a line item on the Indian release checklist, somewhere between the censor certificate and the trailer launch. That is a real change and on balance a good one. Piracy in India is not a moral abstraction: a cam print circulating on day one takes money directly out of the one weekend most films have, and we watched HDTC copies of Drishyam appear within days of release while writing about it.
But notice the pattern, because we have written about it twice this month already. See our piece on the personality rights orders and the Bengaluru John Doe order over Ranabaali. A broad new set of enforceable rights is being built out of proceedings where only one side ever speaks. Rogue sites do not file replies. John Doe defendants do not brief counsel. So the orders record a prima facie case, the findings go unchallenged, and “no useful purpose” becomes the reason not to hear evidence at all.
In the piracy cases that is mostly fine, because a site called 123MoviesHub is not sitting on a serious defence. The problem is that the procedure does not know the difference. The same reasoning that makes a 63-site decree easy would make a 63-site decree against the wrong sixty-third site just as easy, and the remedy the Court offers for over-reach is that you apply to be let out.
Bengaluru Baath Take
Hold two things in your head from this month.
In the first week of October, Indian courts ordered internet service providers, domain registrars and two government ministries to police other people’s files on behalf of six Hollywood studios and three Indian production houses, in 72-hour windows, with compliance affidavits.
In the same month, the body that compels every Indian filmmaker to hand over their script lost more than five hundred of them, along with distribution contracts with the money visible, onto a public file-sharing site.
The enforcement capability is real and it is impressive. The custody of the material the state itself demands is not. If a government can have a domain deactivated in 72 hours, it can keep a certification portal from leaking, and the fact that one happened in the same fortnight as the other is the most honest summary of Indian film policy we can offer.
Piracy enforcement is worth having. Just notice who it is easy for, and who it has never once been inconvenient for.
Sources
- LiveLawBiz: Delhi High Court permanently restrains rogue websites
- MediaNama: Delhi High Court blocks 63 piracy websites
- LiveLawBiz: Madras High Court restrains online piracy of Jailer 2
- ChennaiOnline: Madras HC order on Jailer 2, and the parallel Bail injunction
- SCC Online: Delhi HC pre-release anti-piracy protection for Drishyam
