Delhi HC Hears Abhishek Sharma's Personality Rights Plea

Defamation And Personality Rights Overlap

Justice Jyoti Singh observed this as she dealt with the claims made before the Court regarding various web links identified by the plaintiff as infringing on his personality rights. While the proceedings addressed different aspects of the case, including online content, the Court had made striking observations on the increasingly complicated interface between personality rights and defamation in the digital space. While deciding the contentions presented by both parties, Justice Singh highlighted the frequent interplay of online content that blur the lines between defamation and personality rights.

"We also find this every day where there is a thin line between defamation and personality rights. It is in a flux. There is a little overlap. Defamatory matter may have a personality rights element," Singh said.

Sharma Alleges Misuse Of Identity

Advocate Thakur, who appeared for the cricketer, said it was not a typical paparazzi photo but that the image in the post, originally a photo of the Indian cricketer with his manager, was allegedly edited using artificial intelligence that manipulated its visual elements, the and context to present a false picture to the world as an AI-generated picture.

In the case, the digitally modified image presents Sharma in a misleading manner and it appears that the personality rights and likeness of the plaintiff were misused in this manner without authorization.

Meta Opposes Broad Liability Claims

Varun Pathak, counsel for Meta, submitted that out of eight URLs that are in focus in the case, two links are no longer active. Pointing to one of the remaining links, Pathak argued that they appear to be a paparazzi kind of post and does not affect personality rights. False or negative statements are usually considered to fall under privacy and defamation.

He submitted that by the extremely broad claims on personality rights, it would become impractical to the intermediaries to clean up the internet and to review each content critically. In fact, Pathak stated that Sharma had initially brought before the Court about 25 URLs which went up to almost 4,000. He said accepting the suit would essentially imply the responsibility of intermediaries to "clean up the internet" of negative statements about the plaintiff irrespective of whether such statements actually offended his personality rights.