New Delhi – The Delhi High Court has issued a directive to Google LLC, urging the search engine giant to make a concerted effort to identify and remove misleading content and deepfakes that potentially harm the personality rights of Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. The court emphasized the need for Google to leverage its technology to proactively take down similar infringing material.
To facilitate this, the High Court has recommended a meeting between Google representatives and Sadhguru. This meeting is intended to allow Sadhguru to specifically point out content that may fall under exceptions within Google’s Ads policy, making it eligible for removal. Google’s counsel indicated the company’s willingness to adopt a collaborative strategy to address these concerns.
In its order dated October 14, the court stated, “…thereafter, defendant no. 45 must make an endeavour to ensure that the identical or similar content is removed through its technology so as to obviate the plaintiff’s onus of looking out for such URLs and further to obviate the necessity of the plaintiff making an endeavour to identify such misleading representation and approaching defendant no. 45 for take down.” The court also mentioned that if Google faces any technological challenges or has reservations, it should file an affidavit detailing these issues.
Sadhguru’s counsel highlighted that, in accordance with the Information Technology Rules, Google should develop technology capable of identifying duplicate content to reduce the need for repeated takedown requests from the plaintiff.
Google’s legal representative affirmed the company’s readiness for a cooperative approach, promising active participation in removing any identified infringing links.
This legal action follows an earlier move by Sadhguru and the Isha Foundation, who had approached the high court seeking protection for their personality rights and requesting that various media channels and social media platforms remove fabricated and deceptive videos, posts, and advertisements.
The High Court had previously issued an interim order in May, granting protection to Sadhguru’s personality rights and directing Google to take down and disable any channels and content found to be infringing.