New Delhi: Tech majors Google and Meta have told Delhi High Court they cannot proactively monitor and act against the unauthorised publication and dissemination of clips of court hearings.Google LLC, which runs YouTube, and Meta Platforms Inc, which runs Facebook and Instagram, filed their affidavits in relation to a PIL seeking action against unauthorised recording and sharing of the court proceedings relating to former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s plea seeking recusal of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma in the liquor policy case.The PIL has also sought contempt action against AAP’s Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh, and others for allegedly uploading and sharing the clips in violation of the high court rules.Stating that it cannot become a “super censor”, Meta replied, “There are over 2.9 billion users of Facebook Service worldwide. Further, there are more than 1 billion users of Instagram Service worldwide. In addition, every day, billions of pieces of content are posted and shared on Facebook Service and Instagram Service… Accordingly, it is impracticable (if not impossible) for Meta to locate or identify the contested content allegedly posted... without URLs.”A bench of Justices V Kameswar Rao and Manmeet P S Arora Monday deferred hearing on the petition till Aug 27, noting that Kejriwal, Sisodia and certain other politicians were yet to be served notice. The other respondents in the case include Congress’ Digvijay Singh, AAP’s Sanjeev Jha, Mukesh Ahlawat and Jarnail Singh, and journalist Ravish Kumar.The two US-based companies stated that while the content flagged by the petitioner was no longer available, they could not proactively monitor the resurfacing of the content, unless specific details were furnished. Whenever specific unlawful content is reported or there is a judicial direction, such content is removed as per the law, but there is no legal mandate on the intermediaries to proactively monitor and act against any content, they added.Meta said Section 79 of Information Technology Act and a Supreme Court judgment granted it immunity from liability unless it failed to comply with a takedown order, despite having “actual knowledge” of the contested content, from a valid court order or direction from a notified agency.Google took a similar stand. “YouTube is a dynamic platform where millions of videos are uploaded every hour throughout the world. Therefore, it is impossible for the answering respondent to proactively monitor the videos uploaded on the YouTube platform and have any specific knowledge of the contents of each such video or be able to sift through millions of videos to determine which of them contain the subject proceedings, to what extent or in what manner as to be violative of the applicable law.”On April 23, the court had said unauthorised recording, uploading and publishing of court hearings was prohibited under the high court rules, and sought the social media platforms’ stand on ensuring the removal of the clips of the court hearing.