Kollywood piracy: Lyca Productions to take strict action against media house over defamatory article

Lyca Productions has come out with a statement to clarify allegations of its involvement in piracy. A whistle-blower website, Savukku Online, had earlier claimed that Vishal, actor and the president of Tamil Film Producers' Council, had hired an agency to find out the whereabouts of piracy websites like Tamil Rockers. The report that he received allegedly claimed that all the domains were booked by 'lycamovie.com,' the website of Lyca Productions.

Following the allegations, the company, which is funding big projects like 2.0 and Sabaash Naidu, has come out with a detailed explanation. Here is the unedited text of their press release:

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 narnes under which the so called piracy activities were carried out are lycamovie.com and lycamovies.com.

Lycamovie.com was created on May 21 2014 under the admin name Tamil Tamilan. On May
22'. 2014, the website was re-directed to Tamilgun.corn a popular online piracy site. On 2
June 2014, Lycamovies.com was created under the same admin name Tamil Tamilan.
Subsequently Lycamovies.com was also redirected to Lycamovie.com. Activities on both
Lycarnovies.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 corn and lycamovie.com.

Following this the domain name lycamovie.com was not renewed by the previous admin Tamil
Tamilan and it became free. Lyca Group undertook the domain name Lycamovie.com on July
5'. 2017. Lyca Group could not acquire the domain name Lycamovies.com as the domain
name was renewed. It is common corporate practice to acquire domain names with prefixes and
suffixes as a company expands.

Presently lycamovie.com is redirected to lycaproductions.in, Lyca Productions's official website. We would like to reiterate Lyca Productions was in no way associated with lycamovie.com prior to July 5th 2017. Also post July 5th 2017 there has been no online piracy activities on lycamovie.com. Therefore the allegations against Lyca Productions are baseless and intentional to defame the company name.

As an organisation Lyca Group has strongly advocated Anti Piracy norms and has taken
extensive steps to curb piracy for both our films and other films. If there is any substantiating
evidence against us. we are willing to clarify it any forum It is disappointing that a verified online site like savukkuonline com can carry such a defamatory article without clarifying it with us that goes completely against Journalistic integrity.  It is further disappointing when other media houses carry this without checking with us or clarifying the same We have decided to take stringent action against the media houses and personalities who have spoken baselessly against Lyca Group.

We at Lyca Productions believe in strong content creation and have always supported the film
industry at every juncture. We request everyone not to believe baseless allegations and to
clarify anything with us directly.