HYDERABAD: Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce (TFCC) has approached the Hyderabad police with a complaint against movie pirates. The complainant alleged that an unknown offender secretly recorded the movie ‘Kubera’ on June 20, the day of its release, at PVR Central Mall in Panjagutta and released the pirated version online immediately. Cyber crime sleuths have registered a case and launched a hunt to apprehend the offenders.Directed by National Award-winner Sekhar Kammula and starring Dhanush, Nagarjuna Akkineni and Rashmika Mandanna, ‘Kubera’ was released worldwide. Within hours, high-definition pirated versions surfaced on piracy portals such as 1TamilBlasters and 1TamilMV, alarming the movie producers.In his complaint, TFCC’s Anti-Video Piracy Cell project head Y Manindra Babu alleged that an unknown offender had surreptitiously camcorded the movie from Screen 5 of PVR Central Mall during the 8.45-11 am show on June 20. The watermarks embedded by Qube Digital Cinema, a supplier of the digital cinema packages (DCP) to the movie halls, pinpointed the exact location and time of the leak through forensic analysis.“We are scrutinising CCTV footage, ticketing data and IP logs to identify the individual who had recorded the movie and supplied it to the piracy website operators,” a Cyber Crime official said.
Piracy arrest is second in recent times Acting on the complaint, Cyber Crime police registered a case under Sections 66C and 66E of the Information Technology Act, Sections 318(4) (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 338 (forgery of valuable security, will etc.) read with 3(5) (common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and Sections 63 and 65 of the Copyright Act. Recently, the city police had arrested an AC technician, J Kiran Kumar, for pirating 40 movies following a complaint by TFCC. Kiran confessed to recording and leaking at least 40 movies from different theatres across the city. The accused told police he chose cinema halls based on occupancy data from BookMyShow. Using a mobile phone hidden in his shirt pocket, Kiran recorded the movies. Later, he shared the pirated videos with his handlers via Telegram. In return for sharing videos, Kiran’s handlers paid him $300-$400 (between 25,000 and 35,000) per film in cryptocurrency.
