{"id":38027,"date":"2016-11-17T10:55:24","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T05:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/one\/?p=38027"},"modified":"2025-06-12T11:44:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T06:14:30","slug":"madras-hc-google-youtube-user-details-defamation-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/madras-hc-google-youtube-user-details-defamation-suit\/","title":{"rendered":"Madras HC directs Google and YouTube to provide User Details in Defamation Suit."},"content":{"rendered":"

Google and its subsidiary YouTube were caught in a crossfire in India when Lebara Foundation a non-profit philanthropic institution supporting communities to address the welfare of vulnerable and displaced children, filed a defamation suit over an allegedly defamatory video posted by an uploader named Marupakkam Seithigal on YouTube. A Single bench (Justice MM Sundresh,) of the Madras High Court allowed Lebara\u2019s applications seeking the IP address of those responsible for uploading a \u2018defamatory\u2019 video. The court said \u201cIf a person is aggrieved by the offending video uploaded by an unknown phantom, then the identity will have to be made know or else there will not be any remedy in the eye of the law.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0YouTube was definitely not happy with the court\u2019s order and was not willing to oblige it\u2019s orders.Google\u00a0and\u00a0YouTube\u00a0are hesitant to reveal the uploader\u2019s IP address as this may bring forth\u00a0 privacy law suits from the concerned user. This view is also shared by online activists of Tamil Nadu, who claim that their anonymity will be exposed. YouTube contended that furnishing the user details would go against the YouTube\u00a0and\u00a0Google privacy and community guidelines.<\/p>\n

YouTube and Google then appealed the decision, before a division bench. The court dismissed the\u00a0 appeal and directed them to\u00a0disclose the IP address and other details of the uploader of\u00a0the content that is defamatory to Lebara.<\/p>\n

The court dismissed YouTube\u2019s contention regarding it\u2019s privacy policy by quoting Google\u2019s own provisions which states \u201cWe will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of\u00a0Google\u00a0if we have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to: meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations, detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues<\/em> \u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

After considering the lengthy arguments and contentions The High Court held, \u201cThe learned Single Judge has noticed, and in our view rightly so, that it is not some secret information affecting such personal rights of the undisclosed author of Marupakkam Seithigal which are sought to be made available in pursuance of the directions of the Court, but only the identity and address so that the Court can take appropriate process to determine the rights of the Lebara Foundation which filed the defamation suit and the author of Marupakkam Seithigal. The minimal assistance required for mitigating a civil wrong of Marupakkam is furnishing the information<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Source :1 <\/a>
\nAuthored By- Srividya Viswanathan
\nImage is in Public Domain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Madras High Court has ordered Google and YouTube to reveal user details in a defamation case involving Lebara Foundation. This decision addresses the balance between privacy rights and legal remedies for defamation under Indian law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":10,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[6775,261,6180,2271,1957,8422,8421,546],"class_list":["post-38027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property","category-media-and-entertainment-law","tag-defamation-suit","tag-google","tag-indian-legal-cases","tag-lebara-foundation","tag-madras-high-court","tag-online-anonymity","tag-user-privacy","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38027"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135525,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38027\/revisions\/135525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bananaip.com\/intellepedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}