At times when social media has a huge influence on the lives of people and their reputation, questions of law and regulation of social media without curbing the freedom of expression of people continue to be a vexatious issue. This came up in the Madras High Court recently too. The court has underscored the need for YouTube to put in place a mechanism to prevent its users from uploading malicious content encroaching upon the privacy of other individuals. It did so while passing an ex-parte decree directing a YouTuber to pay a compensation of ₹50 lakh to transgender politician-cum-journalist Apsara Reddy.
Videos taken down
Justice N. Sathish Kumar dismissed the suit against Google LLC, which owns YouTube, since it was reported that it had taken down all 10 defamatory videos posted by the YouTuber against Ms. Reddy. He pointed out that the plaintiff too had given up the relief sought against YouTube. But it was high time the video-sharing company prevented such content, he said.
The judge decreed the suit for damages against YouTuber Joe Michael Praveen alone and directed him to pay ₹50 lakh to the plaintiff. After perusing the contents of the videos produced by senior counsel V. Raghavachari, representing the plaintiff, the court concluded that they “were nothing but malicious and defamatory touching upon the privacy of any individual”.
Justice Kumar went on to write, “Merely because a person has a right to post on YouTube, he cannot cross his limit encroaching upon the privacy of others. Though publication is a right, such a right is subject to reasonable restrictions... When statements touching upon the character, behaviour and personal life of any individual surface in a social media [platform] like YouTube, it will have a serious impact.”
Though the suit was filed in 2022 and notice was served upon the YouTuber, none appeared on behalf of him to defend the case and hence he was set ex-parte. On going through the materials on record, the judge found that the contents of the videos uploaded by the defendant on his YouTube channel were objectionable and and he had made defamatory statements “without any semblance of truth”.
‘Reputation lowered’
“The reputation of the plaintiff has been lowered to such a level that many of her programmes have been cancelled abruptly. Cancellation of such programmes is mainly because of the circulation of the malicious contents in social media. All these factors clearly indicate that though the damages cannot be certain, the plaintiff has to be compensated at least for a sum of ₹50 lakh,” the judge said. Though the plaintiff had sought ₹1.25 crore in damages, with an interest of 36% a year, the judge decided to order payment of ₹50 lakh with costs.
