Tamilrockerz was a piracy website that was run by a group that came to be known by the same name. The origins of the group are largely unknown, but if some reports are to be believe, they came into existence around 2011.
This was a time when torrent sites like Pirate Bay were the go-to platforms to download pirated content for free.
This group was relatively unknown as they would upload only Tamil films on their website.
Their popularity rose when they expand to bootlegging pirated content from other regional languages.
The size of the group still remains a mystery.
But, the extent of their operation indicate that they had a presence outside India.
In March 2008, Kerala Police arrest three persons allegedly connect to Tamilrockers on piracy charges.
Karthi, allegedly the brain behind Tamilrockers, was arrest in Villupuram, Tamil Nadu with two of his aides, Prabhu and Suresh.
The police made these arrests acting upon many complaints from filmmakers saying their films were upload on illegal torrent sites within days of their release.
This group allegedly leak the Mohanlal hit film Pulimurugan online, and are also said to be behind the leak of Pranav Mohanlal’s debut film, Aadhi.
As per one media report, a police probe into bank transactions made by the accuse reveale that they must have made more than Rs 1 crore through the illegitimate business.
Website, if reports are to be believe, is now defunct.
They are said to have cease operations in 2020.
A message from Tamil MV, another piracy website, read:
“Thanks to TR for his wonderful services for a decade! — from team TMV [The site was shut down by themself’s nothing more then that]. (sic)”
But, clones of the website and copycats-sites do still exist.
Latest films and web series are regularly leak on the Internet only days after release.
The pandemic has increase the web traffic for illegal piracy sites.
India record 6.5 billion visits to piracy websites, the third-highest after the US (13.5 billion) and Russia (7.2 billion).
Torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay claim that they do not make much money after spending on maintenance and server costs.
The site’s spokesperson even went to the extent of saying they are probably operating at a loss.
