Bollywood's anti-piracy cyber attacks 'illegal'

India’s Bollywood industry has found a novel way to combat ‘pirate’ web sites that offer films and music for free – using ‘cyber hitmen’ to attack them and take them down. A very effective way to target these sites at the roots, India’s movie industry says. But experts say it’s illegal and breaks international computer crime laws.


Dutch IT expert Rob van den Hoven van Genderen, who works at the Computer/Law Institute at Amsterdam’s VU University, told RNW that various worldwide cyber crime conventions strictly prohibit the use of these online attacks. “We have internationally ratified treaties which state very clearly that no one is allowed to carry out activities like these,” he says.
 
Bollywood industry

Nevertheless, Indian IT company Aiplex Software says it has been hired by India’s Bollywood film industry to launch cyber attacks on international websites hosting pirated content. Sometimes films are uploaded to these sites only hours after they’ve premiered in Indian cinemas.
Bollywood experts say India’s prolific film industry is hit hard by online piracy, especially since much of its output never reaches cinemas in regions outside South Asia. Bollywood fans around the world who don’t have the patience (or the money) to wait for international DVD-releases, use pirate websites to watch the latest Bollywood flick as soon as it’s released in India.
 
Torrents

Aiplex usually locates pirate websites (or ‘torrents’) within a few hours after pirated material is put online. It then sends ‘firm messages’ to the owners of the site telling them to delete the illegal content or face prosecution.
If the site owner doesn’t respond to these notices, Aiplex carries at a so-called ‘denial of service’ (DoS) attack on the site. Basically this means the site is flooded with millions and millions of automated requests to download material. Most sites cannot handle that many simultaneous requests so they crash.
According to Aiplex, it’s a ‘very effective’ policy, as most site owners decide to withdraw the content almost immediately after such an attack.

Illegal

Effictive, yes, but perhaps a step too far. ‘Cyber attacks are simply illegal,’ says Mr Van den Hoven van Genderen. ‘International law prohibits this kind of activity. It’s interfering with international electronic infrastructure and that’s illegal in most countries, including India”.
 
Legal route

He doesn’t have any sympathy for Bollywood’s defence that anything goes in the fight against the huge financial losses they suffer from web piracy . “There are lots of other, legal ways to target these websites,” says Mr Van den Hoven van Genderen. “Bollywood should stick to those. See how Europe and the US are tackling [torrents site] The Pirate Bay. They’re using purely legal ways to keep this site from distributing illegal content”.
“Granted, it may be easier to target these sites in Europe than in Asia, but still - you simply cannot fight illegal activities with your own illegal activities.”


Source:
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/bollywoods-anti-piracy-cyber-attacks-illegal