John Doe

Delhi high court Justice Rajiv Endlaw has ordered three internet service providers (ISPs) to find out the identities behind 35 email accounts and three IP addresses that had allegedly been used a year ago to send allegedly defamatory emails about a Tata Motors Insurance Broking & Advisory Services chief executive Tarun Samant, as reported Mint and others.

We rereported earlier this week that the SpicyIP blog was cited by Bombay high court Justice Gautam Patel as having made a persuasive argument about not issuing blanket bans of websites against persons unknown (John Doe), in-part swaying Patel to only issue a narrow block of specific URLs on file sharing websites.

>To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that an Indian court has taken note of criticism embodied in a web article into cognizance while crafting its opinion. Justice Patel’s reaffirmation of the proposition that the Internet contains a vast body of sound academic writing, it is hoped, will make his brother and sister judges more open to the idea of taking judicial notice of views that are well-founded, albeit expressed in traditionally unconventional fora.<

Breaking: Following the recent trend set by the Delhi high court since 2011, the Bombay high court passed its first ex parte, unconditional “John Doe” order to pre-emptively ban the piracy of Viacom 18 Motion Pictures film Gangs of Wasseypur, said the company’s lawyers Naik Naik & Co.