Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Nov 28: The Supreme Court Secretary General has told the Supreme Court that, at this time, neither its registry nor National Informatics Centre (NIC) has the necessary applications or equipment to stream the Supreme Court’s proceedings live.
According to the Secretary General’s affidavit, it is foreseeable that live streaming services would be dependent on third-party applications to reach a wider audience.
“It may be brought to the kind notice of this Hon’ble court that not only the registry but NIC as well, at present do not have sufficient technical and infrastructure wherewithal to host the live streaming on its own without third-party applications and solutions. The dependency on third-party applications to offer the live streaming services to a larger audience is, therefore, inevitable,” the affidavit said.
However, it was also stated that the Court is striving to resolve this matter so that live broadcasting can take place without relying on equipment provided by other parties.
“It is a work in progress and all efforts are being made towards making the entire live streaming a self-contained ecosystem,” the reply said.
The affidavit was provided in response to a request for the protection of copyright over live-streamed court proceedings, particularly on YouTube, made by former RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya.
A unique agreement with YouTube has been requested in the petition to protect the copyright for both live broadcasting and recorded court sessions.
According to the Secretary General’s affidavit, the registry is required to use third-party services in order to comply with orders in the Swapnil Tripathi v. Supreme Court of India case to uphold the principle of open courts.
“The Respondent No. 1 is constantly working towards achieving its goal for a self-sustained, self-contained, and self-reliant livestreaming platform,” the affidavit said.
The affidavit provided information about the current procedure used, outlining how the computer cell sends content to NIC via a live stream link.
The URL is then broadcast through YouTube on NIC’s webcast portal after being encoded. The links created are also provided for live streaming on the Supreme Court website.
