Days after a whistleblower 'exposé' alleged that actor and Tamil Film Producers Council President Vishal had struck a deal with Lyca Productions, the film production house has issued a clarification.
In an article on the Savukku Online website, it was alleged that Vishal, who promised to root out piracy in the film industry, had struck a deal with Lyca Productions after learning that the company was behind the domain names of several websites that released pirated films.
Responding to this on Monday, Lyca released a statement that reads, “A few days back savukkuonline.com carried an article accusing Lyca Productions of advocating and propagating online piracy. Lyca Productions is a leading Indian Film Production and Distribution company. The domain names under which the so called piracy activities were carried out are lycamovie.com and lycamovies.com.”
Providing a timeline for both the domain names that have allegedly been involved in putting out pirated copies of new releases online, the production house said, “Lycamovie.com was created on May 21st, 2014 under the admin name Tamil Tamilan. On May 22nd 2014, the website was redirected to Tamilgun.com a popular online piracy site. On 2nd June 2014, Lycamovies.com was also redirected to Lycamovie.com. Activities on both Lycamovies.com and Lycamovie.com were shut down by 29th June 2014. At this point, we would like to clearly state that neither Lyca group nor Lyca productions was in anyway associated with either of the domain names - lycamovies.com and lycamovie.com.”
According to publicly available information, www.lycamovie.com was created on May 21 and now redirects to www.lycaproductions.in. Its registrant organisation is Lycatel Services Ltd which is located at Wallbrook Building 195 Marsh Wall London, E14 9SG United Kingdom.
However, www.lycamovies.com has been registered on August 10 last year by a domain registration company with its address in Arizona, USA.