"Livestreaming of court proceedings advances transparency but creates new risks of misuse." Discuss in light of the Supreme Court's 2026 order restricting monetisation of court videos.

In Swapnil Tripathi v. Supreme Court of India (2018), the Supreme Court read the open court principle into the right of access to justice under Article 21, permitting livestreaming of constitutionally important hearings [1]. Its interim order of 24 July 2026 shows that this transparency gain carries an unanticipated cost — the commercial misuse of raw courtroom footage.

Transparency gains from livestreaming

• Democratises access: citizens, litigants and law students witness proceedings without physical presence in courtrooms; the SC e-Committee's Model Rules for Live-Streaming and Recording (2022) extended the framework to High Courts and district courts [2].
• Accountability of the Bench and Bar: public scrutiny of oral observations strengthens judicial accountability without external regulation.
• Legal literacy: Gujarat High Court (2020) and the SC's own Constitution Bench streams made landmark hearings part of public discourse [2].

New risks of misuse

• Decontextualised clipping: selective excerpts with clickbait captions distort judicial observations, which are tentative, not final findings [3].
• Commercial exploitation: monetised clip-farming on digital platforms converts a public good into private revenue [3].
• Erosion of dignity: sensationalised circulation risks media trial and weakens public confidence in the justice system [3].

The 2026 order as calibrated response

• Bars extraction, editing, dissemination, reposting and monetisation of recordings without permission of the Secretary General (SC) or Registrar General (High Courts) [3].
• Not a rollback: livestreaming continues, and bona fide news reporting is expressly exempted, keeping Article 19(1)(a) intact [3].
• Being interim, it leaves enforcement questions open — how registrars will monitor takedowns across platforms.

Transparency and dignity are complementary, not competing, values. The way forward lies in embedding clear licensing and archival norms within the e-Committee's Model Rules, backed by platform-level takedown cooperation, so that open courts continue to serve the citizen's right to know rather than the market for outrage.