Piracy in India: Blocks on Torrent Sites Escalate

Piracy in India has been unique in the world in that piracy sites have been actively blocked. A new blocking message has been added, and it is causing greater worry amongst those who torrent and p2p, mentioning jail time and large fines as penalties.

Piracy in India: blocking language changes

Using a VPN to torrent in India , due to website blocking, has been an issue for some time. The Indian government has been displaying messages such as the following for some years now on piracy sites:

These messages have been rather bland, and not exactly scary or anything. A recent update to the messages has, however, gotten the attention of many of those doing any sort of piracy in India:

Up to 3 years in prison and a fine up to 3,000,000 rupees, which is about $45,000 USD. This escalation of the language is something all torrent users in India should take notice of, and protect themselves with a good VPN for torrenting.

Those who read my weekly Most Downloaded Movies list are no doubt familiar with visiting torrent sites. In most countries, it’s a fairly simple thing: You put the URL in the address bar and hit enter. Some countries, however, aren’t like that. India is one, and some ISPs in the UK block them as well. Here’s what happens when I try to connect from London without my VPN on:

 

And when I connect, even to a VPN server in the UK, it’s fine. This is an ISP level block, where India is a government level block. When I connect to a VPN server in India I am blocked, every time. This has some serious implication for those in India as it shows that, on some level, the government is working to limit their access to online content.

Warnings in the news

A number of India’s news agencies have been reporting on this, citing the warnings as being real in a recent story:

“You don’t have to download a torrent file, and then the actual videos or other files, which might have copyright. Just accessing information under a blocked URL will land you in jail and leave your bank account poorer by Rs 3 lakh.”

India Express’ Swapnil Mathur went on to say that:

“The government has been tough on piracy over the last few years, but this is taking things to a whole new level in order to curb illicit downloads. While it could be considered commendable for the government to spell out just how much trouble you’re going to get into the next time you download an episode of Game of Thrones, it seems rather unlikely that the harsh terms of punishment would come to pass.”

And that’s the thing with this message: It’s all bark and very little bite. They’re only saying they’ll enforce a Copyright Act …the same one which was written in 1957! The fact that it’s time for India to change its tactics towards piracy should be apparent with the fact that they’re enforcing a law written not only before the creation of the Internet as we know it, but nearly 60 years ago!

What this means for individual users of piracy sites in India

At this time, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any major crackdown on individuals who partake in piracy in India. It looks like all they want to do is make it hard for you to access sites, and scare you a little. The problem of the blocking is easily remedied by a VPN, I use IPVanish for all my pirating.

While it may be tempting to continue to pirate in India using sites that haven’t been blocked yet, forever playing a game of ‘whack-a-mole’ with the censorship police, it’s in your best interest to use a VPN now. If the government really is getting serious, and the language says that they are, it could only be a matter of time before you actually face arrest, a fine, or even jail time.

 

Feature image via Finchen / Shutterstock