Expressing serious worries about a facility on Instagram allowing one to overlay his/her own material over someone else’s video footage, the Delhi High Court today, September 29, 2026, issued a serious notice of its use being a potent threat to committing copyright violation.
Making the observation during the hearing of a suit filed by Vikas Divyakirti, who founded the famous civil services training institute named Drishti IAS, against Meta Platforms and other parties, Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani observed while hearing the matter pertaining to personality rights and copyright violation allegations.
The focus of the court's proceedings was on the "Remix" feature of Instagram that lets users create their reels by leveraging other people's videos that are publicly available.
Justice Bhambhani made this point clear through an example. "You have a feature on Instagram where you can actually take a video, paste it and turn it into your video," said the judge to Meta's lawyer. "If there is a recipe that someone is doing, you can take the entire video and put yourself doing the recipe on your own handle."
The judge was direct when referring to the danger that came along with the tool.
“You are creating scope for manipulation. It is a tool for copyright infringement. Do you allow such things on your platform?” Justice Bhambhani asked. He elaborated on this: “It is a mischievous function that you have created.”
He expanded his view to go beyond copyright and pointed out the dangers of having such powerful tools in the hands of unknown people. "These are very powerful tools that you have created, and then you are handing over this to a ghost. You don’t know who’s going to use these tools,” he said. Adding on to that, he gave an example: "In our country today, if one has to buy a gun, they have to go through the whole [application process], but this is even worse than a gun."
Advocate Varun Pathak, on behalf of Meta, assured that he would do some investigation after the discussion in court.
Remix functionality became one of several issues raised in a larger case instituted by Divyakirti, claiming that copyright and moral rights were being infringed through impersonation in fake social media accounts, deepfakes, and fake endorsements.
According to Senior Advocate Diya Kapur representing Divyakirti, the infringers make selective use of certain excerpts from his lectures, distorting them in a manner that distorts the entire meaning of his speech. From media reports, it emerged that one of the videos used certain extracts of Divyakirti's lecture in order to project him as "Hindu-phobic" and "anti-Brahmin," and his image appeared in the deepfake gambling advertisement.
Kapur further drew attention to the remix-like function, saying that through it one can use another person's video while performing on top of it.
Apart from the issue of Remix, another major criticism raised by Kapur against social media platforms' handling of copyright complaints was that they tend to play God without even verifying whether there is a legitimate complaint or not.
She asserted that when the government cannot stop someone from doing a business without taking into account the constitutional procedure, social media intermediaries can decide whom to suspend and whom to keep active by considering the complaints.
Furthermore, Kapur contended that Divyakirti was not filing a case under the IT Act but was actually trying to enforce a constitutional and proprietary right through the court because according to her the complaint mechanism of the IT Act was overloaded and inefficient.
Apart from the discussion on the Remix functionality, the court issued an order for taking down three kinds of infringing content—profiles and channels created using Divyakirti’s name and likeness on YouTube and Instagram, deepfake content, and other forms of identified infringing content.
Meta’s legal representatives stated that out of the total of 13 URLs submitted to the court that were in dispute, eleven, primarily Instagram Reels, may be ordered for takedown. It was also mentioned that the court would also consider ordering the platforms to reveal Basic Subscriber Information and IP logs pertaining to these accounts involved in the creation of the infringing content.
The fourth kind of infringing content, that is, videos in which Divyakirti’s lecture footage is intercut with captions that attribute certain statements to him that he never made, was set aside for argument at a later stage.
The court has yet to issue its judgment on whether the Instagram Remix feature will have to undergo changes, while the company Meta has yet to respond to the judge's view that the feature is "mischievous."
The larger legal issue of determining the boundaries between comment and criticism on one hand and the violation of copyright and personality rights on the other hand also remains undecided.
The legal representatives of Meta will soon inform the court regarding the concerns raised on the Remix functionality. Furthermore, both the parties have been asked to consolidate their list of infringing links and combine them with the ones that have been detected by the team of Divyakirti.
The next hearing will be scheduled for the fourth category of disputes as well as the general issue of responsibility of platforms regarding copyright strikes.
