After Bollywood actors like Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, and others, former cricketer Sunil Gavaskar approached the Delhi High Court on Thursday for the protection of his personality rights. On Friday, the court directed social media intermediaries to act within seven days on the former India captain's plea.
Gavaskar had sought directions from the court to restrict a number of entities from using his persona without proper authorisation.
The former cricketer's petition had been listed for hearing before Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora today. In his petition, Gavaskar had sought restrictions upon several entities from unauthorisedly using his name, image, likeness and other aspects of his persona.
The court told the counsel for Gavaskar that they should first approach the concerned social media platforms about this issue and submit to them the URLs they want removed from those sites.
Justice Arora recently took steps to project journalist Sudhir Chaudhary's rights. Chaudhary had sought relief regarding allegedly misleading AI-generated videos targetting him.
The Delhi HC also heard the personality right suit filed by Salman Khan on Thursday, after which it ordered social media intermediaries to act within a span of three days on the petition filed by the actor.
The court directed the social media intermediaries to treat the complaint under the IT Rules, 2021.
In recent months, the Delhi HC has been playing a pivotal role in shaping the jurisprudence of personality rights of several celebrities, including the Bachchans, Khan, Anil Kapoor, as well as podcaster Raj Shamani.
The HC, in its rulings, recognised that individuals do have the exclusive right to have a say over the commercial use of their persona, especially in times when deepfakes and AI-generated content is widespread.
The applicants have said that impersonations without proper authorisation violate publicity rights while also infringing upon an individual's privacy and dignity. However, it has also cautioned that spaces protected by the Constitution, like artistic expression, satire, news reporting, and others must remain unaffected.
