In a major move to safeguardthe interest of content creators, Maharashtra Cyber Cell arrested founder and ownerof an online streaming application Thop TV.
The founder identified as SatishVenkateshwarlu, an IT Engineer, has been nabbed from Hyderabad on 12thJuly for offering pirated content of broadcast and OTT platforms.
The violator, Satish, of cybersecurity norms has beenremanded to seven days of police custody by a Mumbai court.
Notably, the arrest has been made followed by a complaintlodged by Viacom 18 Media along with another broadcaster to the MaharashtraCyber Cell. In the complaint, the broadcaster alleged that the “roguestandalone” application had been stealing and transmitting their contentwithout authorization.
The Cyber Cell has registered a case against the owner ofThop TV under Sections 43, 66, and 66B of the Information technology Act, 2000,Section 63 of the Copyright Act, and Section 420 and 34 of the Indian PenalCode (IPC).
The preliminary investigations of the Maharashtra CyberCell team found that the accused would steal content from other platforms byusing an inbuilt Application Programming Interface (API).
“Maharashtra Cyber cell has done a technicalinvestigation into the FIR, and accordingly we have arrested one culprit fromHyderabad. The culprit had used Thop TV as a platform and as an app. Heprimarily provided free content on Telegram," said Sanjay Shintre, SP,Maharashtra Cyber.
It is to be noted here, the online streaming platform hada lot of Indian users and it had gained massive popularity in the last twoyears since its existence. There are over 5,000 paid subscribers of theapplication along with lakhs of viewers.
Unlike other platforms, Thop TV charged a reasonable amountof Rs 35 from its users and it also provided an annual package.