Delhi High Court seeks response from Meta, Backgrid on TV Today's plea to restore Instagram page

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought responses from Meta and US based celebrity news agency Backgrid USA on a suit by TV Today seeking restroration of Harper's Bazaar India's Instagram page [TV Today Network Limited & Anr v Backgrid USA Inc & Ors.].Justice Anish Dayal issued notice and listed the matter for further hearing on July 9.However, the Court said that ad hoc directions cannot be passed in the matter. "We can’t pass an ad hoc order in this matter. We do not want to tread on the legal right in an ad hoc manner," the Court said. It told Harper's Bazaar that they cannot claim that they have not committed a mistake. "You cannot say you have not committed any sin. You can say I did not know it was a sin.".TV Today drags US company to Delhi High Court over copyright strikes against Instagram page.Advocate Hrishikesh Baruah appeared for Harper’s Bazaar and told the Court that their Instagram page has nearly 7,000 posts of which only 3 are found to be infringing and yet the account has been suspended. Baruah said that they did negotiate with Backgrid for taking back their copyright strikes but they demanded “extortionist prices” for these photographs. Meanwhile, advocate Tejas Karia appeared for Meta and argued that the action was taken against Harper’s Bazaar as per the IT Rules and Meta’s policy. Karia said that notices were issued to Harper’s Bazaar before their handle was taken down. “There is clear provision in the IT Rules for take down of the handles in case of copyright violation. Rule 3(1) says due diligence by the intermediary and an intermediary has the right to remove the copyrighted content. I have right under the Rules to terminate his account which I have exercised,” he said..Backgrid had made three copyright strikes against Harper's Bazaar India for allegedly using fifteen Halloween pictures without authorisation.After the Harper's Bazaar India Instagram page was suspended on account of these strikes, TV Today had initially filed a plea against Meta (which owns Instagram) before the High Court.While considering this plea, the High Court told TV Today to approach the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) constituted under Information Technology Rules for relief.The GAC has since upheld Meta's decision to suspend the Harper's Bazaar India Instagram page.Following this, TV Today filed a case against Backgrid before the Delhi High Court. .On May 21, the Court was told that Harper’s Bazaar pulled out fifteen photographs from fan pages and put them on their platform but Backgrid made a copyright strike which led to suspension of its page.TV Today claimed that the use of the photographs falls under fair use but Backgrid was asking for nearly US$ 2,000 of each of the pictures to revoke their strikes even though they charge much less for normal use.