Today, the Delhi High Court handed out a ruling that bars over 400 websites from illegally broadcasting the football matches of this year's World Cup. The ruling favors Sony affiliate MSM Pvt Ltd, who have filed the complaint and argued that as the authorized broadcaster of the tournament, the sites live-streaming the football matches have violated its rights, The Economic Times said.
MSM is formerly known as Sony Entertainment Television India Pvt Ltd, which is the Indian division of Sony Entertainment Television. In its complaint, it claimed that it has been broadcasting the World Cup matches on six of its channels, including Sony SIX. The company also broadcasts them via its official portal Sony Liv and on mobile application Liv Sports.
Advocate Saikrishna Rajagopal, who has been appearing for the Sony India affiliate, said about the infringing websites, "These are rogue portals, most of them based overseas, which are pre-dominantly engaged in the activity of infringing the online rights of broadcasters, like MSM".
Rajagopal also mentioned in court that his client has already written a letter of demand to the websites to discontinue its illegal services, but said that a court order or a regulator would be able to force the websites to comply with the request.
Apart from the ban, Judge justice V Kameswar Rao has also instructed several Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block the websites named in the petition of MSM and bar sites in the near future which would violate the broadcaster's rights to officially show the World Cup tournament matches. Moreover, a direction has been issued for the High Court registry to forward a copy of the court judge's order to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Department of Information Technology of the country for the latter to direct the ISPs to block the named websites and those who would be infringing MSM's rights.
