No sufficient infrastructure to live-stream hearings without third party support: SC Registrar to Supreme Court

The Supreme Court Secretary General has informed the top court that both its registry and National Informatics Centre (NIC) do not currently have sufficient infrastructure to live-stream the top court's proceedings without relying on third party applications/ infrastructure [KN Govindacharya v Secretary General]..The dependency on third party applications to offer the live streaming services to a larger audience is inevitable, the Secretary General submitted on affidavit. "It may be brought to the kind notice of this Hon'ble court that not only the registry but NIC as well, at present do not have sufficient technical and infrastructure wherewithal to host the live streaming on its own without third party applications and solutions. The dependency on third party applications to offer the live streaming services to a larger audience is, therefore, inevitable," the affidavit said.However, it was also submitted that the Court is working towards addressing this issue so that live streaming can happen without depending on third party infrastructure.“It is a work in progress and all efforts are being made towards making the entire live streaming a self-contained ecosystem,” the reply said..The affidavit was submitted in response to a plea filed by former RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya to safeguard copyright over live-streamed court proceedings, especially on YouTube.The plea has prayed for a special agreement with YouTube for safeguarding the copyright over live-streaming and archived judicial proceedings.The affidavit by the Secretary General said that the registry is constrained to avail facilities of third parties in order to ensure compliance with directions in the case of Swapnil Tripathi v. Supreme Court of India to uphold the principle of open courts.“The Respondent No. 1 is constantly working towards achieving its goal for a self-sustained, self-contained, and self-reliant livestreaming platform,” the affidavit said..Shedding light on the process presently adopted, the affidavit detailed that the computer cell provides content through a live stream link to NIC. After that, the URL is encoded and published through YouTube on NIC’s webcast portal. Finally, the links generated are also shared on the Supreme Court website for live streaming..During the previous hearing, counsel for Govindacharya had argued that rules are to be changed as per Article 145 of Constitution and copyright cannot be surrendered..To this, the Bench replied,"We had to break the ice and if we thought about rules, we would not be able to take the step at all you see."It went on to note,"Recently the full court of this Court took a decision to live stream Constitution Bench cases. It was also decided that scope of live streaming will be expanded taking into account the experience of live streaming the Constitution Bench cases."