Mumbai Police, on Wednesday, filed an FIR against Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, four others from the company, and YouTube Managing Director Gautam Anand based on a complaint of copyright infringement.
The complaint was lodged by film director Suneel Darshan, who has alleged that Google allowed unauthorised persons to upload his 2017 film, Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha, on YouTube.
The FIR comes a day after Pichai was named a recipient of the Padma Bhushan award.
The police registered the FIR for offences under Sections 51 (copyright infringement), 63 (infringement of copyright or other rights), and 69 (offences by companies) of the Copyright Infringement Act, 1957.
As per an NDTV report, the filmmaker alleged that a large amount of money was being made through the illegal uploading of his film. “I hold Sundar Pichai responsible since he represents Google,” the NDTV report quotes Darshan as saying. “I have tracked over 1 billion views of my Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha. No action has been taken despite this concern being raised with the company.”
According to a report in the Economic Times, a spokesperson from Google India told the publication that the company relies on copyright owners to notify it of unauthorised uploads and offers them “rights management tools, such as YouTube’s Content ID system that gives rights holders an automated way to identify, block, promote, and even make money from uploads of their content.”
Recommended
“When a copyright holder notifies us of a video that infringes their copyright, we remove the content promptly in accordance with the law, and terminate the accounts of users with multiple copyright strikes,” the spokesperson further told ET.
This is not the first FIR to be filed in India against Pichai. Last year, police in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi had booked the Google CEO over a video that allegedly defamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, later, his name and that of other Google executives were removed after they were found to not be involved in the case. According to a report, the FIR was lodged following a complaint by a local resident who claimed that he got over 8,500 threat calls on his mobile phone after he objected to the video that had over 5 lakh views on YouTube.