Mumbai: Almost four years after an MMS clip of two Delhi high school students engaged in oral sex found its way to the internet and created a sensation, 'Indian porn' has come to have a cult following in the country.
Bored with professional pornography, voyeurs have latched on to internet sites and BitTorrent downloads for videos shot on the sly of women having sex with their partners, taking a shower in a hotel bathroom, or trying on dresses in a clothier's changing room.
While following the case of the 19-year-old girl from Kandivli, north Bombay, whose friends spiked her drink and made a sex video of her with their cell phones, DNA found the internet to be flooded with similar clips, often posted with catchy headlines. Most of the videos are available for free downloads on peer-to-peer file-sharing sites like BitTorrent and on blogs specialising in voyeur porn.
"There is nothing special about Indian porn until you bring those MMS clips and videos of innocent women into the picture," says Rahul Gupta, a Delhi-based internet safety expert. "Such porn is a real steal for websites because so many Indian men prefer these voyeuristic videos over the regular adult fare."
In the case of the Kandivli girl, her MMS wasn't uploaded online but distributed among college mates. "She came to the police when she found out, but most victims, unlike her, never even get to know that their privacy has been breached," says a police officer, referring to the video of a honeymooning couple that can be downloaded from a file-sharing site.
But how do such intimate, personal videos of people find their way to the internet? Contrary to popular belief, most voyeuristic sexual videos posted online are not shared by jilted or former lovers. As DNA followed the trail of personal videos hosted on various websites, the story that emerged was one of social networking on the internet; how the Net brings together people with similar sexual perversions.
The Hotel
A large number of videos that are posted online are shot in hotels where young people hire rooms for short durations to be with each other in an intimate space.
A number of hotels in famous tourist destinations like Lonavla, Matheran, Mahabaleshwar, Agra, Manali, and Nainital give out rooms not just on a daily basis, but on a hourly basis as well. Most of the people hiring rooms for short durations are essentially couples looking for a "nice time" before they get back to Mumbai.
Since the motivation for the activity isn't money (none of the videos is sold or purchased on the internet; they are simply hosted for others to see), hotel managers and owners in the business seldom get caught as the videos don't come into the VCD market but remain online on select websites. With the guests unlikely to check these specific websites for voyeuristic porn, the victims may never know that they have been compromised. So there is little chance that they will raise an alarm.
The Detective
A number of videos posted recently on various websites are dated by at least two to three years and mention that the videos were shot as evidence against the woman or the man in question.
Such videos with suggestive titles -- 'Cheating wife making out with her boss', for instance -- are often leaked by detective agencies that created them as evidence for clients in a divorce matter or matrimonial verification.
The prostitute
In a large number of cases, evident from the titles of the videos, the women involved are prostitutes who often do not know that they are being filmed by their clients. Most of these videos are shot in such a way that the man's face is not seen and only the women, who are mostly referred to using vulgar street slang for prostitutes, are featured prominently.
Sexual perversions aside, most of the webmasters looking after these sites and web groups keep an eye open for any complaints by users alleging breach of privacy. In fact, a large number of websites and sex blogs remove a specific video if any user registers a complaint with them alleging that their video was posted online without their knowledge. By doing so, the website absolves itself of the responsibility of hosting "reality porn" illegally and can argue that users post their own videos and a video is removed in case a user lodges a complaint. After all, compliance with the rules often offers the best chance of survival.
Women, beware!
When you step into the changing room of a clothes store, check for suspicious objects on the walls. A camera could be hidden somewhere. If you spot anything suspicious, report it to the manager or, even better, the police.
When checking into a hotel, scan the room as well as the bathroom for cameras fitted on the walls or the roof. Inform the police if you indeed find something suspicious.
Avoid being intimate with your partner in front of a camera, even if it is in the privacy of your own home. You never know: there is always the chance that the video may be uploaded if you break up.