The Delhi High Court ordered the app’s operator to disclose the data after a teacher sued the company for refusing to do enough to prevent the unauthorized sharing of her course material on the platform. Neetu Singh, the teacher who filed the lawsuit, said that several Telegram groups were reselling her study materials at a discount without her consent.
Last week, Justice Prathiba Singh issued an order stating that Telegram had complied with the previous order and provided the data. In an order dated November 24, Justice Prathiba M. Singh stated that they could provide a copy of the files to the plaintiff’s counsel, but with the specific instruction that no one, including the plaintiff and counsel, should reveal the above-mentioned data to any third party, besides for the current proceedings.
However, in a slightly confusing comment, she adds that they can also share the data with the police and government. The judge ordered the Registry to keep the information in a secured cover and considered Telegram’s affidavit and the data chart.
Background of the Case
Neetu Singh, an educator who owns a teaching center for competitive exams, filed a lawsuit against Telegram and several unknown defendants because her copyrighted study materials were being shared and sold on the well-known messaging platform.
Before filing the case, Neetu reported many of these channels to Telegram, many of which were also suspended. She was still not satisfied, though, as new channels appeared nearly every day as the older ones disappeared.
The court came in when Telegram refused to provide information that may be used to identify the suspected channel operators and pirates. The Delhi High Court agreed with the rights holders and made its judgment in late August. Judge Prathiba Maninder Singh ordered that Telegram must provide all identifying information it has on file. This includes the IP addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of channel operators and uploaders.
Both the defendant (Telegram) and the plaintiff (Neetu) made compelling arguments that touched on significant privacy issues, copyright infringement, and how social media sites would work in the future. Telegram said disclosing sensitive information about its users would violate the laws of Singapore and the company’s privacy policy, where some of its servers are stationed.
In reply, the court argued that it was unfair for copyright holders to be “totally remediless against the actual infringers” simply because Telegram servers are hosted in Singapore. The court also stated that traditional principles of territoriality could not be applied correctly in the age of cloud-based solutions and diminishing national boundaries in data storage.
Telegram also mentioned the Indian constitution, which guarantees people’s privacy and their right to free expression. That defense was also unsuccessful.
The Neetu Singh versus TELEGRAM FZ LLC ruling is an excellent example of user information exposure that will be frequently cited in future legislation and court rulings concerning messaging services that make similar security statements based on end-to-end data encryption.
Amul previously quoted this topic in a complaint reported by Amul to have the “defamatory content” addressing it removed from YouTube and social media.
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