Delhi Court Shields Janhvi Kapoor From Online Smut

The Delhi High Court has issued an interim order directing the removal of certain online content pertaining to actor Janhvi Kapoor. Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani specified that the court would not grant all the reliefs sought by Kapoor, finding her initial petition to be excessively broad.

Kapoor had approached the court with a plea to address over 5,000 webpages and social media posts. These included alleged AI-generated pornographic material, impersonation accounts, and chatbots accused of commercially exploiting her name and image without consent. The court urged Kapoor's legal team to identify specific instances of "ex facie pornographic, obscene, prurient, lascivious" material that directly monetized her personality rights.

However, the court expressed reservations regarding Kapoor's request for blanket removal of fan pages. Justice Bhambhani emphasized that not all celebrity name or image usage constitutes infringement, warning against the misuse of personality rights to curb free speech. The court also questioned the feasibility of a dynamic injunction to continuously remove content in the rapidly evolving digital space.

The complexities of copyright versus personality rights were also discussed. The court raised questions about whether selling copyrighted material featuring a celebrity automatically infringes their identity. Meta, representing an online platform, argued against the feasibility of manually reviewing thousands of URLs, citing livelihood rights for content creators. The court urged online intermediaries like Meta not to overstep their roles. Justice Bhambhani indicated that the case presented an opportunity to bring much-needed clarity to the evolving legal landscape of celebrity personality rights. The next hearing is scheduled for August 17.