NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has been informed by telecom player Airtel that it has already blocked 219 websites which were illegally streaming live the matches of 2014 FIFA World Cup.

The Court had earlier on 23 June issued an injunction restraining over 400 private websites from showing the matches, following a petition by Multi Screen Media (Sony) that holds the exclusive rights for beaming the matches in India.

Interestingly, the list given by Airtel does not list any Google website despite the fact that the Court had specifically cited two Google sites.

The vacation bench of Justice V Kameswar Rao gave a directive to the Department of Information Technology and Telecom to ensure implementation of the order of the court. He also said that his directive would be forwarded to the concerned Ministry.

The judge, who listed the matter to come up in the last week of July, gave the directive after hearing Saikrishna Rajagopal who was arguing on behalf of MSM.

The sports arm of MSM, Sony Six is the official broadcaster of the football extravaganza, while its digital platform LIVSports.in has the exclusive rights to live stream the event.
 
The network had moved the court after it found out that several unauthorised websites were streaming the World Cup matches illegally.

MSM had said that it has the official rights to telecast matches in six channels in the Indian sub-continent, including Sony Six and offers live streaming on Sony Liv and Liv Sports (for mobile).

The court order was revised on 1 July and the list of sites was modified after a list was submitted again by MSM. The High Court had also directed that the copy of the order must be sent to DoT and DIT, so that the Internet Service Providers can block the websites.