Examine the role of Indian courts in ensuring accountability of global technology platforms regarding content and copyright management.

Global technology platforms today perform quasi-regulatory functions — deciding what content stays online and who may enforce copyright — while their internal criteria remain undisclosed. In the absence of a dedicated digital regulator, Indian courts have become the principal, though imperfect, check on this private power.

Judicial oversight of content governance

• In Shreya Singhal (2015), the Supreme Court read down Section 79, IT Act, 2000, holding that intermediaries must remove content only on a court or government order, curbing arbitrary takedowns [4].
• Courts test platform conduct against the due diligence and grievance officer obligations under the IT (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules, 2021 [2].
• Judicial review injects constitutional discipline — free speech and non-arbitrariness — into decisions taken by private contract.

Scrutiny of copyright-management tools

• The Delhi High Court (August 2026) directed Meta to place on record its eligibility criteria and grounds of rejection for the automated Rights Manager tool, after a creator alleged fraudulent copyright strikes while his own applications were repeatedly refused [1].
• The intervention secured reversal of strikes and restoration of content, compensating for weak internal redress [1].
• Courts anchor such disputes in the Copyright Act, 1957, affirming that platform tools supplement, never replace, statutory ownership [3].

Limits of the judicial route

• Relief is case-by-case, post-facto and costly; there is no continuous supervision of algorithms.
• Courts lack technical capacity to audit content-fingerprinting systems.
• Individual creators face asymmetric litigation costs against foreign-incorporated entities.

Judicial intervention has thus shifted platform accountability from voluntary self-regulation towards enforceable disclosure, yet litigation cannot substitute for structural oversight. A statutory transparency mandate — published access norms, reasoned rejections and time-bound appeals under the IT Rules, complemented by an independent oversight body on the institutional model of the DPDP Act, 2023 [5] — would embed fairness ex ante, upholding Article 14's guarantee against arbitrariness while sustaining India's creator economy.