Maharashtra Cyber c arrested a 28-year-old man from Hyderabad for allegedly relaying and transmitting content of an Over-The-Top (OTT) platform on pirated applications. The arrest was made after media entertainment house-- Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd and another broadcaster approached Maharashtra Cyber about some rogue mobile standalone pirate application violating the copyright act.
A senior Maharashtra Cyber official said that according to the complainant, a mobile application--Thop TV was relaying and transmitting their copyrighted content-- movies, TV shows, web-series (VOD content) without authorization at a discounted price to the common public. This act led to a substantial revenue loss to these media entertainment houses. Taking cognisance, they approached the Maharashtra Cyber police and lodged a complaint, acting on which a case under relevant sections of the Information Technology Act, Copyright Act and Indian Penal Code (IPC) was registered.
Realising the depth of the issue, the state Cyber police took cognizance and a research and analysis team of Maharashtra Cyber swung into action. Preliminary technical investigation revealed that the suspect in the case, identified as Satish Shriramdasu Venkateshwarlu, 28, a resident of Hyderabad, relayed the content and he was immediately arrested.
Probe revealed that the accused had created a standalone pirated application, through which he used to steal most of the content using its inbuilt API. The arrested accused was produced before the local magistrate court, which remanded him to police custody for a week.
