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

Supreme Court on Monday 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.  The application further sought prevention of usage of live-stream footage for commercial purposes.

The application sought that the live-streaming should be done strictly in accordance with the judgement in Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) &Ors. v. Secretary General &Ors., (2018) 10 SCC 639. The matter was heard by bench comprising CJI UU Lalit and Justice Bela M Trivedi. 

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

At the outset, the CJI remarked–

"We have taken steps in constitutional bench hearings. It will then be translated for three judge bench hearings.We had to break the ice somehow. If we were thinking about rules, we would not be able to take the step at all."

However, the CJI agreed to issue notice on the IA. The bench said in the order–

"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, full court of the Supreme Court took a decision to start live streaming of proceedings before a constitution bench which also decided that the scope of live-streaming can thereafter be expanded. Issue notice only on the prayer in interim application returnable on 28th Nov 2022."

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 had remarked that the Supreme Court will soon have its own platform for live-streaming.

Click Here To Read/Download Order