Torrent websites: Imposing a jail term and penalty for ‘viewing’ torrent is ridiculous
The latest move by Department of Telecommunications to crack down on
Internet Piracy is one ridiculous decision in a long time. According to
the move, people ‘viewing’ the torrent websites can face up to three
years of jail time with the addition of Rs 3 lakh penalty just for
technically ‘visiting’ the torrent website. The absolute lack of logic
and foresight in the decision extends from the vague language mentioned
in the warning. There is no official announcement or mandate out in
public to outline the decision and the working of the process.
Torrent websites themselves are not illegal and are used by major
corporations to distribute large data dumps along with an open platform
for independent artists to put out their content directly to their fans.
Tech companies like the non-profit open source Linux distribution,
Ubuntu puts up its installation images and distributes them as an
alternative using torrent. Back in mid-2013, BitTorrent Inc, the private
company that is responsible for the development of BitTorrent
communication protocol, launched BitTorrent Bundles. Bundles, a format
exclusive for authorised content improved on its business model with the
initial offering of ability to download free files in exchange to email
addresses as
reported by LATimes. The company later added advertiser-sponsored downloads in addition to
paid downloads. The format helped BitTorrent hit 100 million file shares within a year in 2014. The
company recently launched
its streaming service, BitTorrent Now, based on BitTorrent protocol.
All this will be deemed illegal, accessing this authorized content using
torrent websites.
Another reason that makes this move ridiculous is the fact that there
are not many official options to watch the varied content. Indian
streaming services like Hungama, ErosNow, Hotstar, Spuul, Voot, BigFlix,
and BoxTV don’t have great libraries. Netflix launched earlier this
year in India, but the Internet in the country is not well equipped for
online streaming.
Netflix states that the
internet connection
should have at least 3Mbps for standard quality viewing, 5Mbps for HD
quality and 25Mbps for Ultra HD quality. With the current average
download speed of 2.5Mbps, it is impossible to watch any content being
offered by Netflix. The country is not even capable of supporting SD,
standard quality content.
To put this in perspective, on average internet speed in India,
all three price plans, Basic, Standard, and Premium are useless for an average Indian.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have not taken any stand on the ban and follow the government mandate on websites to ban to
avoid any trouble.
However, the bans are sometimes limited to major ISPs and local ISPs
don’t care about the bans. This lax attitude by local ISPs makes them
highly sought after in addition to better speeds at lower prices.
The current bypass methods still work at the time of writing this,
which include ‘https’ trick where you replace ‘http’ in the URL with
‘https.’ However, this trick is only limited to the website that
supports and is end-to-end encrypted from server to the end user. Other
methods include using a proxy or browsing proxy websites.
To conclude, Department of Telecommunications should figure a move which
does not put a sluggish approach at blanket banning anything and
everything. Instead, a fine approach in restricting access to
copyrighted material should be implemented to separate legitimate
content on torrent websites. In addition to refining the workings, they
should also put out a specific mandate outlining the warnings instead of
a dangerously vague warning. But above everything else, they should
work on formulating a plan to provide robust Internet speeds to
consumers across operators, throughout India.
