Unauthorised sharing of Apna College course materials: Delhi HC issues orders to Google, Telegram and WhatsApp – Times of India
The Delhi High Court has issued an ad-interim injunction against unauthorised dissemination of course materials from the online education platform “Apna College.” The court has issued specific orders to WhatsApp, YouTube and Telegram in the cases. Apna College filed a suit alleging copyright infringement against 17 entities responsible for sharing its course materials, including printed content, videos, and more, through these social media channels. According to the complaint filed by Apna College, the defendants were found to be sharing Apna College’s copyrighted content on popular social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and YouTube. The court noted that these defendant entities were enticing students and candidates by freely distributing copyrighted materials, potentially causing significant financial loss and harm to Apna College’s reputation. “The Defendants are also collecting large sums of money to freely distribute the copyrighted material of the Plaintiff,” the court stated. The court observed that the defendant entities had employed various techniques to disseminate Apna College’s courses, videos, and materials without authorisation. What court told Google, Telegram and WhatsApp The court ordered that details of Telegram channels mentioned in the complaint be given to the platform, enabling them to block these channels within 72 hours. It also asked Telegram to provide information about individuals or entities associated with these channels, such as email addresses and phone numbers, for the purpose of the ongoing legal proceedings. It has ordered deactivation of WhatsApp numbers of those involved. Furthermore, search giant Google has been directed to remove the YouTube channel ‘Show Time,’ which contained copyrighted works from Apna College. The court also ordered the suspension of several domain names associated with infringing content, and also mandated the disbandment of a WhatsApp group named ‘JAVA Alpha Placement Batch.’ Mediafire, a file hosting application, was instructed to remove the file-sharing link containing Apna College’s infringing content.