We had missed this earlier: The Delhi High Court had granted a John Doe order (or Ashok Kumar order) to Sony Pictures Networks India and Balaji Motion Pictures, last month, for their film Azhar. The order, which MediaNama has a copy of, allowed the blocking of 13 known streaming and torrent platforms, and 25 unknown platforms and operators (John Does). John Doe and Ashok Kumar refer to unnamed persons or entities that, according to the court order, “are likely to infringe the copyright” of the co-producers, Sony and Balaji. Apart from the unnamed entities, the case was also filed against 34 internet service providers (ISPs), 5 multi-system operators (MSOs), and 20 local cable operators. The court directed the 34 ISPs to ensure "the compliance of the plaintiff’s request to block the access of the URL of the infringing websites". Why was Vimeo named? Last year, courts had made the list of sites submitted to the court, as part of John Doe pleas, not available to the public, like in the case of the John Doe order issued for Masaan. However, in this particular order for Azhar, Vimeo has been named, even though it's not known as a website that hosts pirated content. Last year, Vimeo had also been named in the order for the movie Bombay Velvet. At the time, torrentfreak had pointed out that there were several other issues with the Bombay Velvet order. For example, it listed Pirate Bay’s .org domain even though the site is currently operating from a .se domain.…
