After Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan, Indian filmmaker Karan Johar on Monday approached the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his personality rights, according to legal news portal Bar and Bench.
The case was heard on Monday. Advocate Rajshekhar Rao alleged on behalf of Johar that his name was being misused to raise funds by fan pages, parody accounts and meme pages.
However, Meta platforms (including Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp) told the court that many of the comments flagged in Johar’s suit were not defamatory. Instead, they were made by ordinary people having a discussion.
“These are ordinary people having comments and having discussions. Now to drag them to court for making an ordinary joke… ,” said advocate Varun Pathak representing the Meta platforms.
Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora said not every page can be taken down, prompting advocate Rao to contend that Johar has the right to decide if he wants to have only one fan page.
“There is a line between making fun...The platform becomes responsible. The more the memes, the more viral it is, the more money you make...I have a right to ensure that nobody uses my persona, or my face, characteristics without my consent. The fact that I chose to look the other way does not give any carte blanche to others,” Johar said.
Justice Arora hinted that the court may pass take down orders for specific pages, and if more such pages surface later on, Johar may bring it to the notice of the respective social media platform, which will then be responsible for taking necessary steps.
“If they don't, you come to court,” Justice Arora told Johar.
The matter is scheduled for further hearing at 4pm Monday.
The Delhi High Court had previously upheld the personality rights of celebrity couple Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan after the actors approached the court raising objections to unauthorised use of their names, images and AI-generated content, according to legal news portal Live Law.
Justice Tejas Karia, in an order restraining impersonation of the actress through technological tools including artificial intelligence, observed that such misuse could cause financial loss to the actress, besides loss of dignity, reputation and goodwill.
The court further directed Google LLC to take down the URLs as identified in the suit within 72 hours and to also file in a sealed cover or password protected document all the Basic Subscriber Information of the owners or operators and sellers of goods. It also directed the MeiTY to issue necessary directions to block and disable all the URLs within seven days.