Hindustan Times Promotes “Piracy”!

I was shocked to come across this article in the Hindustan Times (Delhi Edition), one of India’s leading daily newspapers. It explains how to can watch movies and listen to songs for “free.” What it does not mention is that it is providing links to illegal BitTorrent trackers.

The following text is quoted from the published copy of the newspaper article. Emphasis is mine.

If you have a BitTorrent client installed on your PC, you basically know what this is about. And if you don’t have a client, then it’s time to be zapped. Bit torrent gives you freedom. You no longer pay for the music, movies, TV Series, books, software and games that you download. Interested? Just Google “Bit Torrent” and figure it out. Once you got it, here’s what you should download…

Absolutely pathetic!

Below, I am publishing an exact scanned copy of the article from the Hindustan Times which I have mentioned above. This material contains links to websites such as ThePirateBay, MiniNova and DesiTorrents which most of us know are full of illegal content. I find it hard to believe that the standards of national publishing have fallen to such abysmal levels that a leading national daily is willing to incorporate such content.

I do not know the technicalities of this matter and thus I cannot say if this content is technically illegal, but to me it’s good as asking you to buy pirated CD’s from the street side dealers. They haven’t given even the slightest indication that this activity could be illegal! The only logical explanation I can come up with is that some 10 year old may have mailed this content to the editor, and the editor was dumb enough to publish it. Far fetched theory, I know, but what else can explain something as stupid as this!