The Supreme Court today called on the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to include in its proposed policy a provision for action against the breach of the Court's directions restraining unauthorised uploading of audio-video clips of court proceedings.
A bench of CJI Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana was dealing with a batch of petitions concerning live streaming and recording/publishing of court proceedings.
On the last date, the Court instructed its Registry to forward the suggestions received by the Court to the office of the Solicitor General. Other parties/intervenor/High Courts were further permitted to share their suggestions with the Solicitor General, who was to then prepare and furnish a draft proposal to tackle concerns regarding commercial exploitation, misrepresentation, misquoting and dissemination of misleading content related to court proceedings.
At the outset of today's hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta apprised the Court that suggestions received had been sent to MeitY and sought listing of the matter after the Diwali break. He also flagged certain breaches of the Court's earlier directions, praying that the Court consider directing take-down of content in case of a breach.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, for an intervenor, submitted that the problems can be addressed if a duly authenticated repository of the Court proceedings is maintained on an official website of the Court (having watermark, cryptographic signing, etc.) and people can extract the clips only from there.
Justice Bagchi responded that steps on these lines were being taken on the administrative side. The judge also conveyed that steps to prevent extraction of clips from YouTube channels of High Courts are underway. Justice Bagchi emphasised that difficulty persisted in implementation.
Subsequently, when Justice Bagchi recalled that the Court has restrained in its earlier order any "commercial exploitation" of courtroom clips, Bhushan argued that "commercial exploitation" is a vague term. He gave a hypothetical example of a YouTuber who wants to report on a case and use a clip of proceedings from the official website.
Justice Bagchi responded that the YouTuber would have to take permission from the Secretary General of the Court. SG Mehta supplemented that YouTubers make money out of the content they publish and they are not doing it for any public purpose.
Bhushan then said that such a pre-condition may create a problem. But Justice Bagchi reiterated that there has to be Court supervision to the extent of extraction from a clip as well as the purpose for the extraction. "We will examine the problem when we cross it", the judge remarked.
Noting that the MeiTY is formulating a policy in this regard, the Court ordered : "It is said formulation of policy is under consideration. Necessary measures for taking action against those who fail to comply with directions will also be incorporated in policy."
In its July 24 order, the Court had directed that "there shall be no extraction, dissemination, monetisation, posting, re-posting, uploading, transmitting, modification, storing, or hosting of the audio-video recording(s) of the judicial proceedings on social media or any other digital platforms without prior permission of the Secretary General of the Supreme Court of India or the Registrar Generals of the jurisdictional High Courts."
At the same time, the Court clarified that the order will not bar news outlets from reporting Court proceedings without sharing the clips.