Hours after Rajinikanth’s magnum opus 2.0, directed by Shankar, hit screens, the film was leaked online by Tamil Rockers, an online piracy website. It was only on Wednesday that the Madras High Court had directed 37 internet service providers to take steps and prevent 12,564 possible URLs from hosting the film.

Even as links to the film made their way to social media sites, Lyca Productions urged people to watch the movie in theatres and asked them to report any links that they might find by mailing them to antipiracy@aiplex.com.

“Hard work 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!” their tweet read. The Tamil film industry’s battle with video piracy has been a long one and in the last few months, the Tamil Film Producers Council has been taking measures and insisting on theatre owners staying vigilant.

G. Dhananjayan, Founder and Dean of BOFTA institute and film producer said that he had similarly sought to prevent his film Kaatrin Mozhi from being leaked illegally online and had over 2,000 URLs identified. “A pirated version of the film however made its way online a few days after its release and we saw that the URLs were modifications of the ones we had identified and they weren’t on the list. We had to then work swiftly to take it down,” he said.

Stating that it had become a losing battle against piracy for the industry, Mr. Dhananjayan pointed out that despite restrictions against recording in theatres in the State, a film like 2.0 had been illegally recorded in another State and that the audio in Tamil had probably been synced later. “For many of us, we need to just bet on content and hope that the film works since piracy keeps happening despite so many restrictions and measures taken by us,” he added.

Ahead of the release of Vijay starrer Sarkar in November, the council had called for teams to be formed in theatres to check for any illegal recording being done by a member of the audience. The measure had been taken by the council following an announcement made by an illegal website that they would leak the film on the day of its release.