CMO clarifies on Akhilesh’s ‘PK’ remark: Nothing illegal in download

Elaborating further on this, the CMO stated: “Club X service enables authorised private screenings of movies at Club X licensed auditorium of its members. Movies can be screened from the date of their theatrical release in India. Movies are delivered to the Club X Media Servers over a captive satellite network or are physically delivered and are stored in a digitally encrypted form. A licence is required to playback the movie each time and is issued based upon the authorisation received from the content owners.”

It further says, “This screening was done with a licence that was issued for this screening. Assumptions about downloading of a movie over the Internet and any unauthorised use are baseless.”

While declaring PK as tax free in a press conference on December 31, Akhilesh  Yadav had said he had downloaded the movie a few days ago and liked it, and now wanted more people to watch it. The inadvertent slip — that he had ‘downloaded’ the movie — soon attracted criticism on social media as people surmised that the CM had downloaded it in violation of piracy laws.