Despite numerous precautionary measures taken by the producers of Rajinikanth-starrer 2.0, the film was leaked online on Thursday, the day of its release.
According to a report, Vinoth Dakshinamoorthy, an engineer hailing from Peravurani in Thanjavur district and currently working in Chennai, is said to have leaked the whole film via his Facebook account. He also added the Tamilrockers hashtag to it so that his video will appear first when people search for it.
The film was then released in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi on Tamilrockers, a torrent website that hosts pirated copies of films. Following the leak, Lyca Productions issued a statement on Twitter urging fans to report every pirated link they come across. Soon after, fans began reporting pirated links to the email address.
Hardwork of 4 yrs, crores of money, efforts of 1000s of technicians – all to give you a visual spectacle you can watch, love and enjoy in THEATRES!
Do not spoil the experience. SAY NO TO PIRACY! Send all pirated links to antipiracy@aiplex.com & help Tamil cinema shine!#2Point0— Lyca Productions (@LycaProductions) November 29, 2018
According to The New Indian Express, the makers had earlier filed a plea at the Madras High Court, which directed 37 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block over 12,000 websites that exhibited pirated versions of Tamil movies. Lyca’s counsel Vijayan Subramanian had produced an extensive list of 12,564 illegal websites out of which 2,000 websites were found to be operated by Tamilrockers.
Meanwhile, in October, the Tamil Film Producers’ Council (TFPC) had drawn up a list of seven must-follow rules to battle film piracy. This included 24-hour video surveillance with CCTV cameras in all theatres. Additionally, they wanted theatres to deploy staff within all screens to monitor the audience.
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The new rules also stated that every theater must have CCTV cameras installed inside and outside the premises, at the entrance and in the parking lot before November 6. Cameras should record footage all day without any interruption, the rules read, and that films will not be distributed to theaters that do not have CCTV cameras by November 15.
These rules, and guidelines for implementation, were put in place after Vishal’s Sandakozhi 2 and Dhanush’s Vada Chennai were leaked online a day after their release. TFPC’s anti-piracy cell also suspended a list of domains for pirating films.
Earlier, Aditi Balan’s Aruvi had to battle piracy after the film was leaked on the Internet a day after its release. Samantha’s U Turn, Rajinikanth’s Kaala and Sivakarthikeyan’s Seema Raja were leaked online as well.