Journalism of Courage
Despite many legal actions taken against the piracy website Tamilrockers, it continues to leak movies online. There are many which have become a victim of the notorious website. The big Hollywood films that fall prey to it includes films like Marvel Studios' latest offering Avengers: Endgame, Hellboy, Captain Marvel, Dumbo and others.
The culmination of MCU’s existing chapter, Avengers: Endgame that is expected to rewrite the worldwide box office records might suffer losses as it has been uploaded online by Tamilrockers. The film getting leaked has increased the chances of spoilers finding their way to the audience. A police official who is working on the cases filed against the website had earlier said said, "In many cases, we found that leaked prints are mostly procured from theaters abroad, such as in Malaysia or Europe. They get recorded with camera phones by individual viewers, or from labs during post-production works."
The first woman to lead a stand-alone Marvel superhero film, Captain Marvel was also available online for download within a few hours of its release, courtesy Tamilrockers. In a bid to not get caught, Tamilrockers keeps changing their domain extension every few days.
Tamilrockers regularly uploads high definition versions of new movies — as soon as they are released in some cases. Shazam, based DC Comics character of the same name, also fell prey to piracy website.
Hellboy, starring David Harbour, Milla Jovovich and Ian McShane among others joined the bandwagon of films leaked by Tamilrockers. V Rajendran, an expert in cyber law and the chairman of Chennai-based Digital Security Association had earlier said, "When we take days together to block or intercept a website using Sections 69(b) and 70 of Information Technology Amendment Act 2008, it takes few minutes to create a proxy URL for these proxy sites to make the same content available before thousands of people."
DC's Aquaman, a fantasy action superhero film, directed by James Wan starring Jason Momoa was leaked in all the languages it released in India – English, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. Tamilrockers has become a menace for film production houses and distributors.
Pet Sematary, starring John Lithgow, Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz among others was also leaked on Tamilrockers. A senior police official in the cybercrime department earlier said, "Tamilrockers is not run by a single individual or a single entity, it is a scattered group of people, who may be anonymous to each other, possibly working abroad. In multiple occasions during some blockbuster movie leaks in the past, we have found that their sites were often hosted by proxy servers based in Russia, Ukraine or countries like that which give immunity from legal actions."
Micheal Chaves horror drama The Curse Of The Weeping Woman starring Linda Cardellini, Patricia Velasquez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Raymond Cruz, Marisol Ramirez in the prominent roles was leaked on Tamilrockers. It is believed that the piracy websites make money from the ads that are displayed on the site and not the downloads.
Dumbo, helmed by Tim Burton released in March 2019 and was available to download online on Tamilrockers. Explaining the menace of the piracy website, treasurer SR Prabhu of Tamil Film Producers Council earlier said, "Say, one domain is blocked, they come up with another. And it becomes tough to track them. So far, we have blocked close to 900 illegal movie download sites and requested the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to look into this."
Alita: Battle Angel, the action drama, directed by Robert Rodriguez and produced by James Cameron and Jon Landau was available online for free download within a few days of its release.
