Theatre owner held for piracy

For the first time, a unique watermark and digital log records have helped the Tamil Nadu police trace the source of film piracy to a Coimbatore cinema theatre.

The theatre owner and the projector operator have been arrested under the Indian Copyright Act for illegally copying and aiding in distribution of the pirated DVDs of the Tamil-Telugu bilingual flick Naan Ee, which is running successfully in theatres all over.

Police attached to the Video Piracy Cell had launched investigation into the circulation of pirated DVDs of the movie on a complaint from its producer Rajeev Kamineni.

A forensic examination of the DVDs revealed that it had the watermark of the Coimbatore-based Velmurugan Theatre at Udayampalayam.

“The theatre was using Qube Technology under which the movie was transmitted as digital signals via satellite. A watermark, unique to each theatre, is imbibed in the signals. We found that the watermark in the prints of the pirated DVDs were that of Velmurugan Theatre,” Additional Director General of Police (Crime) Pradeep V Philip told Express.

Also, the satellite log revealed that the movie was unusually screened in the theatre in the wee hours of July 6, the day Naan Ee hit the screens worldwide.

“The production company had provided the theatre the password to access the movie at midnight on July 5. The satellite log showed that the film was screened in the theatre between 2.13 am and 4.30 am.  This strengthened suspicions that the film was privately screened for pirating it,” said Inspector K Balamurugan, the investigating officer of the case.

Philip pointed out that Malaysia and Singapore were the usual suspects registering the maximum number of piracy sources.

“This is the first case where the police have identified the source of leak in Tamil Nadu and arrested the theatre owner C P Sathish Kumar and projector operator Mohammed Ali Jinnah,” he said. Police also seized the digital projector from the theatre.

“We are probing if others were involved in distributing the pirated DVDs,” Balamurugan said.