Supreme Court to Live-Stream Proceedings for 1st Time in Historic Move

The Supreme Court will have its own platform to live-stream its proceedings and the use of YouTube for the purpose was only for a temporary period, Chief Justice of India UU Lalit said on Monday. The CJI’s clarification came after former BJP ideologue KN Govindacharya’s counsel Virag Gupta submitted that the copyright of top court’s proceedings could not be surrendered to a private platform such as YouTube.

YouTube has clearly sought the copyright over the webcast,” Gupta told the CJI-led Bench, which also included Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice JB Pardiwala.“These are the initial stages. We will certainly have our own platforms... We will take care of that (copyright issue),” the CJI said, posting Govindacharya’s plea for hearing on October 17.

Gupta said the top court’s 2018 verdict on the issue held that “the copyright over all material recorded and broadcast in this court shall vest with this court only”.Gujarat, Orissa, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Patna, and Madhya Pradesh high courts are already live-streaming their proceedings on their YouTube channels. A full court meeting of the Supreme Court chaired by the CJI had on September 20 decided to live-stream all Constitution Bench proceedings from September 27. The decision came almost four years after the top court decided in favour of live-streaming of the proceedings, terming it as “need of the hour.