Can you land up in jail for viewing a torrent site in India or not? Yesterday, we heard that a jail term as well as a fine of Rs 3,00,000 was the penalty for a visit to a blocked URL, including a torrent site. Today, some reports said no, you won’t be jailed just because you visit a torrent site. You will have to download a film before you could be clamped in irons and thrown into the cooler!

Both reports are accurate, given the vague signals that Indian government bodies send on the matter internet and what Indians can access or what they can’t. It’s just the matter of how you interpret the message that visitors to a “blocked URL” see in India.

This new message, which warns people of jail terms, comes after an order of the Bombay High Court. The producers of the Hindi film Dishoom managed to get a John Doe order, (which are issued against unknown entities), against piracy. As it happens with these orders in India, a number of websites and URLs are submitted to the court by the movie makers, seeking a ban on them. Many of these URLs are in the block list for seemingly right reasons, but many are there just because the people who created these lists are ignorant about the internet. Mostly courts agree and order blocking of the URLs.

This time round, according a report by SpicyIP , the court also wanted people to know why these URLs are banned in India, and it wanted them to see a warning. The court wanted a fairly elaborate message. Internet service provider Tata Communications, which also happens to run many landing stations and internet gateways in India, told the court that it can show the message — the same message that you might see on the blocked URLs — and the court agreed.

The idea behind the message was to tell people that it was illegal to download a movie and that it carried a risk of jail term as well as a fine. But the way the message was worded was a problem.

Here is the message that web users are seeing in India.

“This URL has been blocked under the instructions of the Competent Government Authority or in compliance with the orders of a Court of competent jurisdiction. Viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating an illicit copy of the contents under this URL is punishable as an offence under the laws of India, including but not limited to under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act, 1957 which prescribe imprisonment for 3 years and also fine of upto Rs. 3,00,000/-. Any person aggrieved by any such blocking of this URL may contact at urlblock@tatacommunications.com who will, within 48 hours, provide you the details of relevant proceedings under which you can approach the relevant High Court or Authority for redressal of your grievance”

So what this message implies is this:

— A particular URL has been banned in India.

— “Viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating an illicit copy of the contents under this URL is punishable.” Now this “content” can be anything. John Doe orders, as we have seen again and again, don’t just block a specific URL or a torrent site. They block much, much more. There have been so many John Doe orders in India that no one actually knows how many and what sort of URLs have been blocked under these orders!

In this particular case, the case of Dishoom, not only entire torrent sites have been blocked but also image hosts, file hosts, sites that can be used to share links etc. So, theoretically web users in India not only face the jail term if they download a copy of Dishoom but probably also if they look at the picture of Taj Mahal on an image host that is blocked in India. The message clearly warns that “viewing of the contents under this URL” is illegal. And this URL could be anything and the content under that URL could be anything.

So, can this message lead to a jail term?

Probably not. But theoretically yes. The problem, as the India Today report highlighted, there is no proper mechanism that a government body can use to prosecute people who are downloading a torrent film. It’s not clear how the court or the government will follow up on this message and in what ways they can use it against a web user.

In India, prosecuting someone is very difficult. Murderers go free all the time. Rich kids who run over poor people sleeping on footpaths don’t get the punishment they deserve. Here we are talking about prosecuting someone for accessing a “blocked” URL. This is surely not happening.

The message is probably intended as a warning, as a threat, probably to scare people. But a message from a court should not be a warning. It should be enforcement of law, if there exists a ground for enforcing the law. And this is a problem with India’s John Doe orders.

Despite far-reaching implications, genuine and legitimate websites are blocked in India routinely with John Doe orders. And the premise  is not some crime but just the possibility of a crime. Most of the time, the block lists that are part of John Doe orders are prepared on the basis of whims and fancies.

[Paraphrased from a Jawed Anwar piece]

  internet, Media, naked truth