The Supreme Court issued a notice seeking instructions on how to protect the court’s copyright on video footage of court hearings that are being streamed live via platforms such as YouTube.
The application was also intended to prevent commercial use of recordings of live streams. The motion called for live streaming to be strictly in accordance with the judgment of the Center for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) & Ors. vs Secretary General & Ors. (2018) 10
SCC 639.
The case was heard by the bench of Justices CJI UU Lalit and Bela M Trivedi.
This petition was filed by former RSS ideologist He KN Govindacharya. He argued that the copyright of the live-streamed Supreme Court proceedings cannot be given to private platforms like YouTube.
Petitioner’s counsel pointed out that according to the ruling, the copyright in the live stream resides with the court. Furthermore, it was established that recordings and broadcasts could not be used by anyone for commercial purposes.
However, CJI has agreed to issue a notice. The bench said in the order, “The petition prays for live-streaming of supreme court proceedings as per the judgment in CASC.”
Recently, the Supreme Court ruled to initiate a live-streaming trial before the Constitutional Bench and also ruled that the scope of live-streaming may be expanded.
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, CJI Lalit said the Supreme Court would soon have its own live streaming platform.
