Supreme Court: Notice Issued On Plea To Retain Court’s Copyright Over Live-Stream Videos Of Hearings, Prevent Commercial Use Of Footages

The Supreme Court observed and has issued notice in a plea seeking directions to preserve the copyright of the Court over the video footages of Court hearings live-streamed through platforms like YouTube. Further, the application sought prevention of usage of live-stream footage for commercial purposes.

The application seeks that the live-streaming should be done strictly in accordance with the judgement in the case Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) &Ors. v. Secretary General &Ors., the bench comprising of CJI UU Lalit and Justice Bela M Trivedi, heard the matter.

Former RSS idealogue K N Govindacharya, filed the petition, it was submitted by him that the copyright of live-streamed Supreme Court proceedings could not be surrendered to private platforms such as YouTube. The counsel appearing for the petitioner’s pointed out that as per the said judgment, the copyright of the live-stream will be retained by the Court. Further, the court held that the recordings and broadcast cannot be used by anyone for commercial purposes.

At the outset, it was remarked by the CJI-

Steps have been taken by us in constitutional bench hearings. Thus, it will then be translated for three judge bench hearings. We had to break the ice somehow and if we were thinking about rules, we would not be able to take the step at all.

However, it was agreed by the CJI to issue notice on the IA.

The bench in its order stated that the petition prays for live-streaming of supreme court proceedings as per the judgement in Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) & Ors. v. Secretary General & Ors. Recently, a decision was taken by the full court of Supreme Court to start live streaming of proceedings before a constitution bench which also decided that the scope of live-streaming can thereafter be expanded. Notice issued only on the prayer in interim application returnable on 28th Nov 2022.

However, four years ago, on September 26, 2018, the Supreme Court in the Swapnil Tripathi case, had accepted in principle the idea of live-streaming cases of public importance. Earlier, it was remarked by CJI Lalit that the Supreme Court will soon have its own platform for live-streaming.