NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has cautioned against the invocation of personality rights to prevent the dissemination of information as a blanket tool to stop people from talking about their alleged wrongdoing or to suppress satire and criticism.
Justice Anup J Bhambhani made the observation while granting protection to the Physics Wallah founder Alakh Pandey, who had moved the court seeking protection of his name, image, and other attributes of his personality from impersonation and monetisation by third parties.
The judge granted protection to Pandey only for contents that were sexually vulgar, monetised his personality without any licence, and impersonated him. “In the opinion of this court, the concept of personality rights as has been claimed in the present matter may be overbroad and therefore susceptible to misapplication,” the judge said.
The judge said the court wanted to ensure that personality rights were not deployed “to prevent dissemination of information in relation to wrongdoing, or to extinguish an entire genre of expression, including caricature, lampooning, or parody which may not amount to commercial exploitation of an individual’s personality or publicity rights.”
Pandey had alleged that several internet platforms and social media users were monetising his name, image, etc., through social media posts, sticker packs, videos, websites among others. Some of these contents, he alleged, were vulgar and sexually explicit.
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