Delhi HC Hears Content Creator's Plea, Seeks Response From Meta Over Copyright Strikes

The Delhi High Court has sought responses from Meta Platforms and the Centre over allegations that copyright complaints on Instagram are being misused to target and extort digital content creators.

A bench of Justices V Kameswar Rao and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora was hearing a PIL filed by Noida-based content creator Nitin Joshi, who has more than 1.6 million Instagram followers. Joshi has alleged that certain individuals are exploiting Meta’s copyright enforcement system to get creators’ content blocked and then demand money for its restoration.

According to Joshi’s petition, alleged scammers upload unrelated content on old Facebook posts and later replace it with a creator’s original video using the platform’s editing feature. Since the original date

of the Facebook post remains unchanged, the altered post can appear to have been published before the creator’s content.

The petition claims that such posts are then used through Meta’s Rights Manager, a tool designed to protect copyrighted material.

Reportedly, Joshi approached the court after his own video, in which he discussed the alleged copyright scam, was blocked worldwide following a copyright complaint. He has claimed that nearly 40 creators have faced similar problems.

The PIL has sought the formation of a Special Investigation Team to investigate the alleged cyber-extortion racket. It has also sought a grievance mechanism involving human review rather than relying solely on automated copyright enforcement.

During the hearing, Meta questioned the maintainability of the PIL but said it wanted to take proactive steps against alleged misuse of the system.

However, the court issued notices to Meta and the Centre and observed that the matter involved a larger issue of digital extortion.