The Delhi High Court has criticised news agency ANI for directly approaching YouTube to block a channel over alleged copyright infringement despite the matter being pending in court, Bar and Bench reported.

ANI had earlier filed a copyright infringement suit flagging nine videos uploaded by news portal Dynamite News. 

YouTube had reportedly blocked the channel due to copyright strikes initiated by ANI. In an interim order, a single judge had allowed the unblocking of the YouTube channel after it undertook to take down the nine videos. However, ANI later claimed copyright infringement in eight more videos and directly approached YouTube. When the channel was blocked again, Dynamite News approached the single judge, which allowed the unblocking of its YouTube channel on October 14 subject to the taking down of eight videos.

Hearing ANI’s appeal against the unblocking of the channel, the Division Bench of Justices C Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla has now expressed displeasure over the manner in which ANI had approached YouTube directly, according to Bar and Bench. 

The court found ANI’s appeal to be unjustified and reportedly opined that the single judge was “unduly indulgent” to ANI.

“The single judge has, if anything, been unduly indulgent to the appellant in directing the respondent to take down the infringing URLs without even examining the aspect of infringement,” the bench said, according to Bar and Bench.

Senior Advocate Jayant Mehta, appearing for ANI, reportedly requested the court to limit its observations to the present matter so that they are not cited against the news agency in other copyright infringement suits. The court said that it cannot bind the hands of other courts.

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