Report against Google and its CEO, employees for copyright violation in India

Google has been the most popular search platform for over a decade now. Nonetheless, with billions of users worldwide, there is no way to fact-check and IP-check every content uploaded on this platform. That’s why Google has created IP checking systems such as YouTube’s Content ID system to prevent infringement content on the Internet. However, this system still has many flaws. That’s the main reason why there has been a report against Google and its CEO, employees for copyright violation.

Report against Google for copyright violation

On January 25, 2022, police in Mumbai, India had filed a First Information Report (FIR) against Google, its CEO Sundar Pichai and other officials and employees for displaying a movie on YouTube without permission, infringing the rights of its copyright owners.

This report was prepared by the police as soon as they receive a certain offense reported by the victim of the copyright infringement cases.

The movie was called “Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha,” a Hindi language romance musical drama released in 2017 in India.

According to the report, this movie was uploaded on the video-sharing platform without either a contract or the consent of its creators.

The movie’s director and producer, Suneel Darshan, sought registration of the copyright violation case before the court. As directed by the court, said the case was registered at the MIDC Police Station in Andheri, the seat of India’s Bollywood and located in the western part of Mumbai.

The FIR also mentioned responsible personnel for this situation, including YouTube Head Gautam Anand, Grievance Officer Joe Grier, and Google employees Namrata Rajkumar, Pawan Agarwal, and Chaitanya Prabhu.

This incident is clearly the fault of the infringers. However, Google can’t shake all of its responsibilities off as it is the one that controls the platforms where the video is uploaded. On the other hand, from a different viewpoint, this has also proved that the “rights management tools” of Google haven’t been as efficient as they stated. 

Expert opinions

Regarding the movie “Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha” case, Anuradha Salhotra, founding partner at Rahul Chaudhry & Partners in Gurgaon stated: “The practice of uploading content on YouTube and other platforms without signing a contract with or seeking permission from the copyright owner is fairly rampant in India. The reason for such is a lack of awareness of copyright law and its implications. This problem is even compounded by the Internet and the mass proliferation of smartphone devices and video editing apps (to avoid copyright detection tools).”

Although the IP detection and protection tools of Google may have been viewed as inefficient, Anuradha Salhotra has a different viewpoint in this matter: “Such tools are not only efficacious but in all likelihood, will become increasingly efficacious with time. YouTube’s internal tools to block infringing content are known to issue copyright strikes even against uploaded-but-unpublished infringing materials. Currently, copyright owners in India may not be leveraging these tools to their full potential, and may, therefore, view legal action against Google as a more efficacious remedy.”

She further added on the matter: “That said, the effect of such tools to address infringing materials may vary depending upon whether the issue at hand pertains to a straightforward instance of copyright infringement – or an act which is statutorily excluded from being considered as an infringement of copyright. It is unclear, at this juncture, if the systems these platforms have in place to identify infringing content are calibrated to identify infringements in sync with India’s copyright law and statutory exclusions.” 

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