The recent blocking of archive.org, the internet archive Wayback Machine, led to the floating of a lot of conspiracy theories on the whys and why-nots leading to it. As of today, it seems to have been restored on most Internet Service Providers. But until today, if you opened the website, this is what you’d see.

As opposed to speculation that the Department of Telecommunication blocked the website under the order of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), BBC quelled the rumours. On Wednesday, the British broadcaster reported that the blocking was as per a Madras High Court order on August 2 against petitions filed by Prakash Jha Productions and Red Chillies Entertainment.

As per the petition, the two production houses sought blockage of 2,650 URLs and archive.org was part of them. The court order imposed an interim injunction on the website for a week for “infringing” copyrighted films – Lipstick Under My Burkha and Jab Harry Met Sejal. One of the court orders reads thus:

…any other person or entity be and are hereby restrained by an order of interim injunction for a period of one week from this date infringing cinematographic film “Lipstick Under My Burkha” and said Work be directed to block all websites/web pages including websites mentioned in Schedule-A hosting contents that relate to plaintiff’s copyright protected cinematographic film “Lipstick Under My Burkha” in any manner…

Medianama broke the story on August 8 and sought a response from the Internet Archive, who had reached out to the government but got no response. Wayback Machine is a popular website among researchers and fact-checkers and allows users to check older versions of a website.