New Delhi: The Supreme Court would hear on Monday a plea of former BJP leader K N Govindacharya that the copyright of live streamed apex court proceedings cannot be surrendered to private platforms like YouTube. For the first time, the top court, on September 27, started to live-stream its Constitution bench proceedings related to the hearing of pleas challenging the reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections and the row over control of services between the Centre and the Delhi government.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Uday Umesh Lalit and Justice Bela M Trivedi has listed an interim plea of Govindacharya for hearing on Monday. Lawyer Virag Gupta, appearing for Govindacharya, had on September 26 mentioned the plea for urgent listing. He referred to the terms of the use of YouTube and had said this private platform also gets the copyright of the proceedings if they are webcast on it.
Referring to a 2018 judgement, the lawyer had said it was held that the copyright over all the material recorded and broadcast in this court shall vest with this court only. Direct for a special agreement with YouTube for safeguarding the copyright over live streaming and archived judicial proceedings, as per the directions in judgement of Swapnil Tripathi v. Supreme Court of India..., the plea said.
The bench had said that these are initial stages and the top court will have its own platforms to live stream the proceedings. In a unanimous decision taken at a full court meeting headed by the CJI, the apex court decided to live-stream proceedings of all Constitution bench hearings from September 27, four years after the path-breaking judgement on it by Justice Dipak Misra, the then CJI, in 2018. (PTI)
