Delhi High Court: The present application was filed by plaintiffs seeking decree of permanent injunction against Defendants 1 to 3, its operators, owners, partners, and all others acting for/on their behalf, in any manner facilitating uploading, hosting, streaming, reproducing, distributing, making available to the public through their platforms/websites any cinematographic work/content/programme in relation to which plaintiffs own the copyright and other attendant reliefs.
Anish Dayal, J., directed rogue cyberlocker websites to take down all listings of copyrighted contents of Plaintiffs 1 to 8, i.e., Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.; Amazon Content Services LLC; Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.; Disney Enterprises, Inc.; Netflix US, LLC; Paramount Pictures Corporation; Universal City Studios Productions LLP; and Apple Video Programming LLC.
Plaintiffs were amongst the leading entertainment companies known for creation, production, and distribution of motion pictures and cinematograph films which constituted plaintiffs’ protected works under the Copyright Act, 1957 (‘the Act’) over which they had exclusive rights. Plaintiffs submitted that no other entity could, without license and authorization from them to upload, stream, disseminate, communicate their content in any manner whatsoever, through any transmission, platform including the internet.
Plaintiffs’ grievance was against Defendants 1 to 3, Doodstream.com, doodstream.co, and dood.stream respectively, who claimed that they were ‘rogue cyberlocker websites’. Plaintiffs submitted that these rogue cyberlocker websites provided an infrastructure specifically designed to incentivize hosting, uploading, storing, sharing, streaming, and downloading of copyrighted material unauthorizedly (‘illegal content’). Defendant 4 was the ‘server’ of Defendants 1 to 3 which facilitated storing and dissemination of illegal content. Plaintiff submitted that these rogue cyberlocker websites had created platforms which allowed users to sign in and create their own dashboard through which they were permitted to upload content. The said content then became part of a ‘library of content’ which allowed a global search to access it by other viewers. Plaintiffs stated that massive amount of infringing content, on which they had exclusive right, was uploaded by users on defendants’ websites.
The Court after noting that defendants were ready to comply with complete take down in entirety of plaintiffs’ infringed material exhaustively and completely from their platforms, issued the following directions:
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Defendants 1 to 3, 5, and 6 should take down all listings of plaintiffs’ infringing contents which would be communicated to them in writing/email through counsel for plaintiffs. This communication would be inter-se counsel, i.e., from plaintiffs’ counsel to defendants’ counsel so that it was responsibly received and promptly executed;
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Defendant 1 to 3, 5, and 6 should disable all features which allowed regeneration of links and reuploading of infringing content post takedown inter alia the features like, removal of the “generate link” and “disable download link (protected option)” tabs; and
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Defendants 1 to 3, 5, and 6 should file an affidavit disclosing revenues generated, duly certified by Chartered Accountant, from the time of launch of said websites till date.
The Court allowed plaintiffs to monitor takedown of their infringing listings which they had communicated in the past and would communicate hereinafter to defendants.
The matter would next be listed on 8-4-2024.
[Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. Doodstream.com, 2024 SCC OnLine Del 1955, Order dated 18-3-2024]
*Judgment authored by: Justice Anish Dayal
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the Plaintiffs: Saikrishna Rajagopal, Suhasini Raina, R. Ramya, Anjali Agrawal, Raghav Goyal, Mehr Sidhu, Ayush Saxena, Advocates
For the Defendants: K. S. Elangovan, Venkatesh Mohanraj, Sameer Aslam, Advocates
