In response to the objections raised by the Court during the proceedings of a case, tech company Google has conveyed to the Delhi High Court that it is impossible for it to proactively monitor and act against unauthorised recording of online court proceedings and uploading or sharing of such recordings to its video platform YouTube.
In its affidavit before the Court, Google said that directing social media platforms to prevent the recurrence and re-upload of unauthorised recordings of court proceedings is legally untenable and impossible to implement.The platform stated that recordings are made outside YouTube and it cannot determine whether a video depicts court proceedings, whether the recording was authorised, or whether it violates any law, especially since court rules vary across India.
"In such circumstances, it is not possible for the answering respondent [Google] to proactively monitor its platform and "prevent the recurrence of such unauthorised recordings and their subsequent dissemination", as is prayed for," Google's affidavit stated.
It added that it is well settled that Google is only required to remove videos "specifically identified by their URLs, once the specific videos have been adjudicated to be violative of the applicable law" by a court.
"Further, apart from the specifically identified videos on YouTube, the Answering Respondent [Google] cannot sift through the millions of videos on its platform and/ or monitor its platform to determine if there are other videos which pertain to unauthorised recordings of court proceedings and are in violation of applicable law," the tech giant said.
Google further submitted that Indian law does not require intermediaries to act as arbiters of disputes concerning third-party content or to monitor material uploaded by users actively.“Intermediaries such as the Answering Respondent cannot be expected to perform an adjudicatory function and cannot be expected to judge as to which of the removal requests received by it are legitimate and which are not. The determination of the legality legitimacy of content must be made by a competent Court,” the affidavit stated.
The affidavit was filed in response to a plea by advocate Vaibhav Singh seeking action against persons who uploaded videos of Arvind Kejriwal addressing Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma’s court in person. Kejriwal had addressed the Court over his application seeking Justice Sharma’s recusal in the excise policy case. Soon after the hearing, several videos of the proceedings went viral on social media.
In his plea, Singh has also sought directions to social media platforms to prevent unauthorised recordings of court proceedings from surfacing online. The High Court had also expressed its concerns over the issue in April, stating it involved the larger interest of the institution of the judiciary and unauthorised recordings need to be controlled. In its affidavit, Google has said that videos flagged by Singh have already been removed or blocked in India.
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