The Delhi High Court has observed that the concept of personality rights cannot be deployed in an overbroad manner to prevent dissemination of information concerning wrongdoing or to extinguish forms of expression such as caricature, lampooning and parody, particularly where such expression does not amount to commercial exploitation of an individual's personality or publicity rights. Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani made this observation while hearing a suit filed by educator and Physics Wallah founder Alakh Pandey alleging infringement of his personality and publicity rights by various online platforms.
The Court noted that the claim of personality rights, as presented in the matter, may be overbroad and therefore susceptible to misapplication. Referring to an earlier decision of a coordinate bench in DM Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House & Ors., the Court stated that it would want to examine and ensure that personality rights are not deployed to prevent dissemination of information in relation to wrongdoing, or to extinguish an entire genre of expression including caricature, lampooning or parody which may not amount to commercial exploitation of an individual's personality or publicity rights.
Proceeding on this caution, the Court found that at the interim stage, it was persuaded to grant protection to Pandey only in respect of three specific sets of alleged violations. These included content portraying him in a sexually vulgar manner, content which monetised his personality for gain without a licence or right to do so, and content involving impersonation of him. The Court held that Pandey had made out a prima facie case in respect of these three categories. It also found that the balance of convenience lay in his favour and that irreparable injury would be caused if interim protection was not granted.
Accordingly, the Court passed an ex-parte ad-interim injunction against certain defendants in respect of the alleged infringing content. The Court further directed several intermediary defendants to take down the offending URLs and disclose relevant particulars of persons behind the allegedly infringing accounts and content.
The Court also directed that if Pandey discovers that any mirror websites of the identified defendant websites are infringing his copyright in their content, he would be at liberty to furnish to the concerned Internet Service Provider (ISP) or Domain Name Registrar (DNR), on affidavit, the particulars of such other websites evidencing prima facie infringement of his rights to such content. The Court clarified that for an intermediary such as an ISP or DNR to enjoy safe-harbour protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, it must operate in a strictly neutral manner and cannot be conferred with discretion to block websites merely on the asking of a party.
The Court emphasized that the present order did not delegate such discretion to the intermediaries. It stated that it was not asking the ISP or DNR to decide whether or not to block a website, but only giving the task of technically verifying if a given website, claimed by Pandey to be rogue, is indeed a mirror website of the defendants' websites against whom an order of injunction was being passed. The Court added that if, at the plaintiff's request, a website is technically found to be a mirror, alphanumeric or redirect website of the defendant websites, the concerned ISP and/or DNR is required to enforce the ex-parte ad-interim injunction granted by the present order.
The Court further observed that it would be counterintuitive for the plaintiff to seek blocking of a website to which he has granted an appropriate licence, and therefore, it did not discern any real risk that the plaintiff would misuse the direction granted by this court.