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On Wednesday, the Mumbai police have booked an FIR against the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, Youtube MD Gautam Anand, and other related executives in a copyright breach case.
The case has been registered after a magistrate order under section 156(3) of the CrPC after the filing of a private complaint by Indian film producer Suneel Darshan regarding the uploading of his 2017 released film “Ek Hasina Thi, Ek Deewana Tha” on the platform of Youtube.
The MIDC Police booked the FIR for the offenses under sections 51,63 and 69 of the Copyright Act. The accused executives also include the grievance officer of Google, Joe Grier, and executives Namrata Rajkumar, Pawan Agarwal, and Chaitanya Prabhu.
Suneel Darshan through the help of his lawyer Aditya Chitale submitted a report where he mentioned that he is making films for the past 30 years and his report also alleged the company for illegally gaining through the uploading of his films on the platform. The report clearly stated that Darshan has not given the rights of his film mentioned from which the platform is earning revenue.
Darshan further alleged that the company is making a lot of money through the advertisements that are run before and after the broadcasting of the films. He added that even though his team’s number of emails no action was taken regarding the same.
According to the public perspective, this is a misuse of the company’s platform to violate the right of the filmmakers and content creators to save their content from being uploaded on their platforms without their permission. This is not the first case where the platforms like youtube have picked up content whose copyright was not paid off by the creator. The more issue-making point is the revenue that these companies generate through views and advertisements from this content.
The filing of the complaint is a right step taken by the police and court to protect the right of the creators which will set a landmark for further cases that might come under the Copyright Act of India.