Automated copyright takedown systems are meant to protect creators from piracy. However, a case before the Delhi High Court alleges that they can be manipulated to do the opposite. Financial educator and entrepreneur Pushkar Raj Thakur has alleged that bad actors exploited a loophole in Meta’s copyright enforcement system by uploading unrelated content to Facebook pages and later replacing it with copies of his newly published videos using Facebook’s desktop “Edit Post” feature. Because the platform retained the original upload date after the edit, the manipulated posts appeared older than Thakur’s originals. The actors then allegedly relied on these backdated posts to file copyright claims, triggering Meta’s automated enforcement system to remove Thakur’s original videos.
What happened in court: The commercial suit first came up before Justice Tushar Rao Gedela in May, when the Delhi High Court registered the plaint and issued summons to the defendants. During the hearing, counsel for Thakur argued that “the plaintiff is the original content creator” whose videos were being taken down “on account of the counter strikes issued“. Counsel further submitted that the “very same videos” remained available on YouTube, demonstrating “the originality in the content of such videos created by plaintiff.”
Appearing for Meta, Advocate Varun Pathak told the Court that “some investigation needs to be carried out” before it could ascertain why the plaintiff’s content was being removed through counter-strikes. The Court granted Meta one week to obtain instructions and, if required, explain “what are the measures that Meta Platform Inc. has taken or can take against such illegalities as alleged by the plaintiff.”
When the case was heard again, counsel for Thakur submitted that “despite order dated 29.05.2026, the plaintiff’s videos continue to be taken down from the platforms of defendant No.2 on the basis of copyright strikes by alleged bad actors, who have uploaded the plaintiff’s videos onto various other platforms with forged back-dated time-stamps.”
Meta, in response, assured the Court that “the plaintiff’s videos will not be taken down on grounds of copyright strikes till the next date of hearing”, that “the plaintiff’s account will also not be closed by reason of alleged repeated copyright strikes”, and that, upon the plaintiff furnishing the relevant URLs, it would “ensure that the plaintiff’s deleted videos are restored.”
How Meta’s automated system works: Meta’s Rights Manager is the company’s automated copyright management tool for Facebook and Instagram. Eligible rights holders can apply for access and upload reference files, including videos, images and audio, that they own. The system continuously scans content uploaded across Meta’s platforms for potential matches against those reference files. When a match is detected, the rights holder can…
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