New Delhi: The upcoming film “Brahmastra: Part One – Shiva” is set to hit theatres on September 9. Several “rouge” websites have been prohibited from streaming it illegally by the Delhi High Court, who stated that piracy must be stopped and dealt with harshly.

The co-producer of the Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt movie, Star India Pvt Ltd, filed a lawsuit, and Justice Jyoti Singh issued an ex parte temporary restraining order in response. She noted that the availability of the movie online concurrently with or shortly after its theatrical release would have a negative financial impact on the producers and devalue the movie.

“There is no gain saying that piracy has to be curbed and needs to be dealt with a heavy hand and injunction against screening of copyrighted content by rogue websites ought to be granted… Plaintiff has made out a prima facie case for grant of ex parte ad-interim relief,” said the court in its order dated September 2.

“Defendants No. 1 to 18 (rogue websites) and all others acting for and/or on their behalf are restrained from in any manner hosting, streaming, retransmitting, exhibiting, making available for viewing and downloading, providing access to and/or communicating to the public, displaying, uploading, modifying, publishing, updating and/or sharing on their websites through the internet or any other platform, the film ‘Brahmastra: Part One – Shiva’ and contents related thereto, so as to infringe the Plaintiff’s copyright therein, till the next date of hearing,” the court ordered.

The court directed the ‘Domain Name Registrants’ to suspend/block the domain names registrations of the rouge websites named by the plaintiff. It also asked the Centre to issue necessary notifications calling upon the internet service providers to block access to these websites.

“Looking at the investments made by the plaintiff in the production and promotion of the film as also the exclusive right vested in it under the provisions of the Copyright Act, this Court prima facie agrees with the plaintiff that if the rogue websites communicate the film in any manner, on any platform, simultaneously with the theatrical release of the film on 09.09.2022 or in its close proximity thereafter, it would severely impact the interest of the plaintiff monetarily and will also erode the value of the film,” the court opined.

Directed by Ayan Mukerji, Brahmastra also stars Amitabh Bachchan, Nagarjuna Akkineni and Mouni Roy among others.