JioStar has filed a criminal complaint in Maharashtra against ExpressVPN for offering services that can allow users to bypass geographical restrictions on its streaming platform, which was first reported by Storyboard18.
The OTT platform has filed a complaint with the Maharashtra Cyber Digital Crime Unit under the Copyright Act and the Information Technology Act, alleging that ExpressVPN is deliberately offering its Virtual Private Network (VPN) services to users outside India who want to access content restricted only to Indian territory. The streaming giant said that it is “specifically promoting and engineering” mechanisms to bypass their territorial licensing controls, according to the complaint accessed by Storyboard18.
Details of the Case:
JioStar has filed this complaint referring to ExpressVPN’s blog post titled “How to watch Hotstar abroad with a VPN”. This article is a short guide explaining how users can access JioStar’s content through their Indian virtual server. “You can securely stream Star Cricket Live, the English Premier League, shows from FX and Disney, and much more with ease,” reads their blog post.
For context, as the name suggests, virtual servers differ from physical servers. A virtual server in VPNs refers to the software-based VPN on a shared physical server. When a user connects to a virtual server, the IP address shown to websites appears to belong to the country they selected in the VPN app, even if the server is physically located in a different country. For instance, ExpressVPN’s Indian virtual servers are physically in Singapore.
It is important to note that ExpressVPN was among the VPN providers that moved their servers out of India after the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) mandated that they store user-identifiable information for at least five years.
It also states that users are responsible for complying with domestic laws and JioStar’s terms of service. Despite it stating that ExpressVPN is optimised for Hotstar, a Reddit user reported that JioHotstar isn’t working with ExpressVPN. Several users have also reported that they cannot access JioStar’s content while using a VPN. MediaNama also couldn’t access JioHotstar using the Proton VPN.
It is not only ExpressVPN that has blog posts guiding users on how to access JioStar using a VPN service. For instance, ProtonVPN, Surfshark VPN, and PureVPN also have blog posts that guide users. However, JioStar appears to have named only ExpressVPN in its complaint with the Maharashtra Police.
Why is JioStar suing ExpressVPN?
While stating that “territorial exclusivity forms the economic backbone of content licensing”, the complaint also cited the following reasons for filing the FIR:
- Indemnity claims from rights holders
- Risk of termination of licensing contracts
- Loss of subscription and advertising revenue
- Reputational damage in global…
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