The Delhi High Court has called out Meta Platforms over how it grants access to its Rights Manager copyright protection tool, asking the tech giant to lay out its official eligibility rules. The directive came during a lawsuit filed by content creator and business coach Mohit Kumar. During the hearing, Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani raised tough questions about why legitimate creators are constantly denied access while bad-faith actors manage to get the tool and use it as a weapon, remarking that denying genuine creators access while enabling scammers was like giving the house keys to a burglar.
Kumar, who creates educational videos under the handle Rise with Mohit, claimed that scammers stole his original videos, registered them on Meta's Rights Manager, and slapped fraudulent takedown notices on his channel. His lawyer told the court that despite applying for the protection tool three separate times, Meta turned him down without giving a clear reason. Meanwhile, smaller, sketchy accounts with just a few hundred followers somehow gained access and launched fake strikes, crippling his views and hitting his brand deals hard.
In response, Meta’s legal team assured the bench that the false strikes had been looked into, reversed, and the deleted content restored. The company agreed to submit its access policies and review criteria to the court while promising to re-evaluate Kumar’s application. Highlighting that systemic loopholes in automated copyright tools are driving a surge in litigation among creators, the court issued formal summons to Meta and set the next hearing for September 24.