Why this ‘Kolaveri di' over torrent websites, wondered computer geeks across the country as they woke up on Thursday morning to a rude shock – the popular sites sites for downloading movies, shows and songs had been blocked.

Follwing a court order, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications had blocked popular torrent and media download websites such as torrentz.eu, mnova.eu, isohunt.com and thepiratebay.se.

However, other websites such as demonoid.ph, torrentz.cd and mininova.org appear to have been overlooked.

On March 29, the Madras High Court, in response to an appeal by R K Productions that various ISPs and telecom firms be restrained from distributing any part of its film ‘3' without a licence, issued an interim injunction ordering ISPs to prevent such free downloads .

The ban will continue in effect till such time the Court issues its final orders on the case, or is vacated by a higher court.

"Access to certain sites has been blocked by Airtel in compliance with Court orders," an Airtel statement said.

Ironically, this is the same film whose song Kolaveri Di became an overnight online hit, generating millions of fans through websites such as Youtube.com.

“Isn't it better for a movie if the song goes viral online with many downloading it,” asked 21-year-old college student, Ms Aarushi Behl. “These people would never have paid for the video or song, but this might entice to pay and watch the movie in a hall.”

Added Mr Karan Kapur, a Delhi-based entrepreneur, “This move is not good for India. After all, many of the sitcoms we love to watch are not aired locally, so we have to download the latest episodes. The same goes for music.”

But many say that it would be juvenile to believe that banning a select few sites will stop ‘downloaders' from accessing content of their choice across the free world, that is the world wide web. After all, how did torrents evolve - when direct peer-to-peer file sharing services such as Napster were shut down.

“It's just about evolution of the net to something new. There is always a way around it, and pirates and tech junkies have always been far ahead of legislation,” said Mr Akash Agarwal, a Noida-based businessman.

Tech-savvy users are already busy spreading ways to get around the ban among their peers through popular social networking tools such as Facebook.

Meanwhile, online reports have surfaced of hacker groups threatening to take down websites of top Government agencies, if the Court order is not reversed.

A similar issue happened in December 2011 during the release of Bollywood flick, Don 2, when some of the service providers blocked their websites to prevent download. Globally, when megaupload was taken down, it led to a similar uproar among netizens.

>roudra.b@thehindu.co.in

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