After Baahubali 2 and Velaiilla Pattadhari 2, the much-hyped film titled 'Mersal' becomes the most recent victim of online piracy as it has been leaked for online viewing and free download within 24 hours of its official release. The full movie with different qualities has hit torrent websites.
On Wednesday, Mersal was released to an earth-shattering response from its audience. The critics have also given fairly positive reviews to the action thriller, written and directed by Atlee Kumar.
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According to reports, TamilRockers and TamilDon, which are known to be the two leading sites in illegal business, have already uploaded the full movie and thus the business of the film starring Samantha, Kajal Aggarwal and Nithya Menen, is likely to be affected.
Piracy has become the new trend after the government has listed downloading of movies from the web as a punishable offence. Not only Kollywood, piracy has been looming large over other film industries including Bollywood and Sandalwood. A few days back, India's 2018 Oscar nomination 'Newton' was leaked on several torrent sites and was available for both online viewing and download.
In August, Jab Harry Met Sejal starring Shah Rukh Khan-Anushka Sharma was reportedly leaked online within 24 hours of its theatrical release. Though many strict measures and policies have been implemented by governments, none of them has been successful in curbing the menace.
There have been instances when a few movies fell prey to online piracy even before they were released in the theatres. Over the years, it has been noted that the piracy rate has increased manifold with the rise in internet penetration across the globe and India.
Usually, big movie banners take precautions to prevent the movie from getting leaked online but these days the exercise has turned futile due to several issues.
