Vikram: Stop illegal online screening of the Kamal Haasan-starrer, orders the Madras High Court

Over 1,000 piracy sites and Internet service providers are prohibited from the unauthorised screening of Vikram, according to the Madras High Court. Starring Kamal Haasan in the lead, the film is all set for release on June 3.

Judge C Saravanan's order, followed a petition from Raaj Kamal Films International (a production house owned by Kamal Haasan), which requested an injunction against 29 Internet service providers, including BSNL, Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and Reliance Jio, besides 1,308 websites for unauthorised copying and transmission of Vikram.

The film, directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj; also starring Vijay Sethupathi and Fahadh Faasil, will be released worldwide on 1,000 screens, according to an affidavit filed by Raaj Kamal Films International through advocate Vijayan Subramanian.

The advocate claimed that the applicant (producer) thought that when the film was released on the internet, websites would illegally copy, record, download, reproduce, transmit, and communicate the copyright-protected film. In addition, the applicant's business would suffer serious losses as a consequence of this act, and the film's commercial viability and business prospects would be harmed as well, according to the affidavit.

There is concern that these 1,308 websites could be used by third parties to upload, reproduce, distribute, display and copy the film via these 29 internet service providers. This would constitute copyright infringement.

Further, neither of the websites had a "take-down" mechanism, which allows copyright-protected materials to be removed from a web platform upon request of the holder. Those requests had been ignored, it alleged.

A U/A certificate was issued to the film earlier this week by the Censor Board. During the Cannes Film Festival 2022, Kamal Haasan announced the movie would be in a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) format and on the Metaverse platform.

Vikram has music by Anirudh Ravichander.