Delhi High Court Seeks Centre, Meta's Reply On PIL Alleging Misuse Of Instagram Copyright Strike Mechanism

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Union of India, the Ministry of Home Affairs, Meta Platforms Inc. and the Government of NCT of Delhi in a public interest litigation alleging that Instagram's automated copyright-strike mechanism is being exploited by organised cyber criminals to extort digital content creators.

A Division Bench of Justice V. Kameswar Rao and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora sought responses from the respondents on the plea filed by content creator Nitin Joshi.

The petitioner, Nitin Joshi, who runs the verified Instagram account "ji_nitinjoshi" with roughly 1.6 million followers, moved the High Court through Advocates Raghav Sethi, Gurmukh Singh Arora, and Tejbir Singh.

He sought judicial intervention against what the plea describes as an "organised and rapidly proliferating form of cybercrime and digital extortion."

According to the petition, the racket involves anonymous entities, bot-operated accounts and fraudulent complainants filing fake copyright infringement complaints against digital content creators.

The complaints allegedly trigger Instagram's automated enforcement system, leading to accounts being disabled without any independent verification, human review or prior notice to the affected users.

The plea states that perpetrators then contact victims demanding "ransom running into several lakhs of rupees" to withdraw the fraudulent copyright complaints or restore the disabled accounts.

The petition traces its genesis to an incident involving Joshi himself. On July 7, 2026, he published a video titled "Instagram's Biggest Copyright Scam" exposing the alleged racket and inviting affected creators to come forward.

According to the plea, within hours, several creators shared documentary evidence of similar extortion attempts.

The following morning, Joshi's own video was blocked worldwide pursuant to a copyright complaint attributed to an entity identifying itself as "Nayon Mia." The petitioner says he was informed only that "Your video is blocked in multiple locations" and that "Only you can see this message."

On July 9, 2026, the petitioner submitted a representation to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Ministry of Law and Justice, the Commissioner of Police, Delhi, with a copy to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the Ministry of Home Affairs, and Meta's Grievance Officer. He sought urgent remedial, investigative and regulatory action against the alleged cyber-extortion racket.

The plea states that despite the representation having been expressly flagged as urgent, no substantive reply or response had been received by the time the petition was filed.

The petition contends that the copyright enforcement mechanism, as presently structured, is "manifestly arbitrary, contrary to procedural fairness and incompatible with the rule of law." It argues that the mechanism violates Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution.

The petition also challenges Rule 3(1)(c) and Rule 4 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 that allows accounts to be deactivated without prior notice.

To Joshi, disabling entire accounts based on unverified or fraudulent copyright complaints effectively silences a creator's voice and amounts to a de facto restriction on free expression.