The Delhi High Court in India produced a sweeping judgment restraining 47 operators of 163 infringing Web sites – and anyone associated with them – from any distribution of copyrighted works by members of the Motion Picture Association and ACE. Plaintiffs and works listed in the judgment were by Warner Bros., Disney, Netflix, Apple, and Crunchyroll.
In addition to the infringing Web sites and domains, 22 Domain Name Registrars and 8 ISPs have been commanded to block the infringing sites. Domain name registrars are no longer able to operate in anonymity in India, as per new ‘know your business customer’ requirements handed down by India’s High Court in December 2025.
The Copyrighted Works are covered under ‘work’ as defined under Section 2(y) of India’s Copyright Act of 1957. The Plaintiffs are described as “the author and / or first owner and / or owners and /or exclusive distributors of the Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works in India. They have all the rights under Section 14(d) of the Act in such cinematograph films / shows.
The works include series TV programming, including Warner Bros.’ Friends, Netflix’ Stranger Things and Apple’s Silo. A number of movies from each of the studios were also listed by name, including Warners’ Batman, and Disney’s The Jungle Book and Mulan, and Crunchyroll’s The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten.
The judgment is linked below, which lists the individual infringing domains/sites, the ISPs and Domain Registrars and other parties. Two government agencies were also named in the judgment: India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and its Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITY); to issue notifications calling upon ISPs to block access to the Infringing Websites and other such websites that may subsequently be discovered to be infringing the rights of the Plaintiffs.
Warnings issued
Despite that take-down notices were sent to the infringing Web sites in May 2025, the sites continued infringing operations, which included distributing, hosting, storing, reproducing and making them available to the public without authorization.
Call to action
The judgment gave the infringing parties 72 hours to comply with the order to cease operations. They have four weeks to convey “name, address, contact information, email addresses, bank details, IP logs, and any other relevant information available of the owners / operators” to the Court.
The ISPs were given 72 hours to block access to the infringing sites. The blocking order is dynamic, meaning that it applies to the infringing sites even if the sites are moved, mirrored, updated or “based on the name, branding, identity or source of content.”
No financial penalties were identified in this decision. The next hearing in this case is to occur in April 2026.
Why it matters
This is the second major (announced) anti-piracy decision in India since December. On December 11, ACE announced the shuttering of MKVCinemas which operated a both an infringing distribution operation with 25 associated domains and a drive-to-drive cloing tool.
Further reading
In the High Court of Delhi at New Delhi, CS 1361/2025. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (et al) versus Animesugez.to (et al). Order 18.12.2025. High Court of Delhi at New Delhi via Verdictum.in.
Delhi High Court orders strict e-KYC for domain name registrants to curb cyber fraud. Article. December 30, 2025. Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment (CADE, a project co-funded by the European Union)
