Hindi
MPAA wins case against Torrentspy
MUMBAI: In a victory for the major Hollywood studios, a federal judge in Los Angeles terminated an ongoing lawsuit against the operators of TorrentSpy.com in favour of all six of the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) member companies.
The MPAA maintained that the site TorrentSpy blatantly contributes to, profits from and induces massive infringement of copyrighted content including movies, music and games. The court imposed the harshest sanction against the TorrentSpy defendants because of their destruction of evidence and subversion of the judicial process. The ruling means that TorrentSpy operators are liable for copyright infringement.
MPAA executive VP and director worldwide anti-piracy operations John Malcolm says, “The court’s decision is a significant victory for MPAA member companies and sends a potent message to future defendants that this egregious behavior will not be tolerated by the judicial system.”
“TorrentSpy is a one-stop shop for copyright infringement and we will continue to aggressively enforce our members’ rights to stop such infringement,” Malcolm adds.
In its decision, the court ruled that “although termination of a case is a harsh sanction appropriate only in extraordinary circumstance, the circumstances of this case are sufficiently extraordinary to merit such a sanction.” The court found that the evidence was “not deleted or modified negligently, but intentionally in direct response to the institution of this lawsuit.”
Observing that the defendants “already had been subjected to lesser sanctions in this case,” including a fine of $30,000 for violation of a court order, the court concluded that the “harsh sanction” of terminating the defendants’ case was the only appropriate remedy.
The evidence defendants destroyed included forum postings with references to copyright infringement and other incriminating statements; site directories referencing copyrighted works and subcategories clearly referring to pirated content; and user IP addresses.
The worldwide motion picture industry, including foreign and domestic producers, distributors, theatres, video stores and pay-per-view operators lose more than $18 billion annually as a result of movie theft. More than $7 billion in losses are attributed to illegal Internet distributions, while $11 billion is the result of illegal copying and bootlegging.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
