New Delhi: Sumit (name changed on request) had seven days to save his YouTube channel. YouTube had notified him that many of his videos were flagged for copyright violations by Asian News International (ANI) for using its visuals.

Sumit received more than three copyright strikes in one go. These particular videos were immediately taken off air, and YouTube informed him his channel would soon be permanently deleted. YouTube strikes down a video when it receives a claim of copyright infringement against a YouTuber. Three strikes in a row means he is out of YouTube for good. He had just seven days to contest it.

After trying many jobs, Sumit had turned to YouTube, where he has built a following as a political commentator critical of BJP—a growing genre attracting former journalists, comics, and citizens. Against him was the fifty-five-year-old media goliath ANI that has become the primary source for daily video reportage for both TV news and social media creators.

Sumit said he reached out to ANI. It asked him eventually to pay between Rs 15-18 lakh (precise amount withheld to protect identity) in copyright penalties and licence fees to withdraw the strikes. Despite repeated requests for a cheaper deal, ANI didn’t budge.

Sumit said he paid the ‘full amount’ to resolve the copyright claim and save his channel. In return, ANI lifted the copyright strikes and granted Sumit a one-year prospective access to its audiovisual and written news content.

Sumit isn’t the lone guy facing the aggressive copyright claims of ANI, which has adopted a new strategy to punitively leverage YouTube’s copyright policies in India to generate revenue. Using the death clause in YouTube policy and India’s vague provisions for fair use of copyrighted material, ANI is effectively forcing YouTube creators to buy expensive year-long licences. 

The agency’s approach is to negotiate pricey licensing deals with YouTubers, including several who are strong critics of the BJP, even as YouTube holds a sword over the content producer’s channel for multiple claims of copyright violation.

Besides Sumit, The Collective spoke to three other YouTubers who have signed or are in the process of signing a deal with ANI after receiving copyright strikes. ANI initially quoted between Rs 15 lakh and 25 lakh to these YouTubers to revoke the strikes. We reviewed the Youtubers’ correspondence to confirm that ANI has made such demands. Industry insiders told us of at least three others who had complained to peers that ANI was asking for exorbitant sums, which in at least one case went up to Rs 40 lakh. We could not independently verify that. When we asked ANI about it, it did not directly deny the claim in its response. 

While ANI might be following a business it understands to be legal and fair, the episode has raised larger concern about copyright laws and the fair use rights in India by content producers who are worried about being squeezed out of their livelihoods – sometimes wiping out years of labour to build a community – between YouTube’s policies and copyright owners willingness to play hardball. 

Ravish Kumar, one of India’s most prominent journalists on YouTube with 13.2 million subscribers to his channel, told The Collective that he takes all necessary precautions to not violate copyright and has not received a notice from any entity, but he is concerned too. 

“In this case, only YouTube can and should provide protection. YouTube engages a lot with creators on copyright issues. But one thing still bothers me: A channel being summarily shut down with just three strikes against mere claims of copyright infringement. Instead of a strike, there can be a system of sending a notice to remove the video. But the channel should not be shut down until the right authority decides on the infringement,” he said. 

“If the creator is being forced by an entity to pay lakhs of rupees using the threat of a strike, then this is not a fair business practice in my view. In case - and only when it is determined that an infringement has taken place - a penalty can be imposed, but it should not be like a defamation suit of Rs 100 crore. In any case, the punishment imposed should be proportionate to the violation. How can three violations steal one’s means of livelihood and years of work?” he added.

This is arguably the first case to come out in public about any major news outlet enforcing copyright claims at wide scale against YouTube creators in the space of news and political satire. One prominent and recent instance of copyright claims filed by a legacy media organisation was the 2021 defamation and copyright violation case brought by India Today group against Newslaundry for a satire roasting its anchors.

We sent a list of detailed questions to ANI pertaining to the reported assertions, claims and facts of the story. It did not deny any of the claims or assertions. Neither did it answer the specific questions. It instead shared a general statement defending its policies and practices. It said: “In any society governed by the rule of law provides for punishment for theft. ANI invests heavily in original news gathering, with bureaus across India and abroad and significant resources deployed in real-time content production. As the exclusive copyright holder of its content, ANI has the sole legal right to communicate its work to the public or license its use.

“Enforcing these rights—through mechanisms like YouTube’s copyright policy or legal action—is not extortion. It is the lawful protection of property, as guaranteed by copyright law. Anyone disputing our rights is free to seek legal recourse,” ANI said. 

The full ANI statement and our questions are available at the end of the story. 

We asked YouTube whether its practice of deciding at the first instance whether a copyright claim against creators’ work on its platform is valid and deciding to take down videos and channels on its discretion puts the latter at a disadvantage. 

YouTube’s spokesperson said, “We work hard to balance the rights of copyright holders with the creative pursuits of the YouTube community. It’s not up to YouTube to decide who “owns the rights” to content, which is why we give copyright holders tools to make copyright claims and uploaders tools to dispute claims that are made incorrectly.”

We found this was not entirely true. YouTube does take the first judgement call on such claims and then leaves it to the creator to dispute it or strike a deal with the claimant. YouTube shared a brief of its copyright policies with us, which contradicted the publishing giant’s quotable statement. 

The grey zone of Indian copyright laws and YouTube’s policy in India muddies the waters and gives ANI an additional bargaining chip.

You Too, YouTube?

India’s Copyright Act 1957 allows usage of someone’s copyrighted material under terms of “fair dealing”. 

Section 52 of the rules under the 1957 law establishes grounds of fair dealing, allowing use of copyrighted material without the copyright owner’s permission for purposes such as criticism, comment, news, reporting and many more.

In practice, there is a severe lack of specificity in law and regulations about how fair use doctrine is to be practised. It can boil down to an argument over whether the usage of a four-second clip out of a two minute video for news and analysis constitutes fair-use? In absence of clear guidelines, courts become the arbiter, in each instance. 

News and political creators on YouTube that we spoke to talked about the lack of clarity on fair use of ANI’s material, both in Indian law and the way YouTube deals with it.

YouTube claims to have a vetting mechanism to filter copyright claims. In its public information forum, it claims that it globally applies copyright exemption based on the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the US, with its own categories of exemptions called “fair use.” Technically news, satire and parody are some of the exceptions, says YouTube. In its response to us, YouTube said it works under “applicable copyright laws” but did not clarify if this meant the Indian copyright law or the US one as it claims on its website. YouTube provided a summary of its processes. It can be read at the end of this story.

A copyright infringement by a creator on YouTube potentially leaves the platform open to liabilities as well. So, YouTube’s peremptory and discretionary strikes against creators gives the global giant protection from potentially expensive legal wranglings by litigious copyright claimants.

The creators we spoke to pointed to the fact that YouTube tends to play it safe in India—finds it better to promptly take content down rather than risk wading into legal trouble about the validity of a claim of infringement.

The fair use doctrine is given a short shrift by YouTube, which swiftly takes down content accused of violating copyright, long before the fairness of its use is ever truly examined, the creators claimed. It is mainly because ANI can hold YouTube liable as the publisher of content it claims infringes copyright. YouTube chooses to apply fair use in a way that protects its own liability while leaving the courts to be the final adjudicator.

Fair-use principle is further hamstrung by the inability of small creators to challenge the powerful, litigious organisations in court. The process is fairly arduous and might not guarantee results in the favour of the creator. So, in many cases such strikes hold.

YouTube has another condition that spells doom for the creator. If a channel has three strikes in a ninety-day period, it will automatically be deleted with the creator being effectively banned from the platform. To larger creators, the platform provides a seven-day grace period where the creator is given time to reduce the strike count. But the clock keeps ticking, forcing the creators to settle with the copyright holder.

This seven-day ticking clock under YouTube policy allows ANI to hold disproportionate bargaining power in negotiations.

A copyright lawyer explained, “Why can ANI charge exorbitant sums to a creator for ANI content? It is because YouTube’s process allows it.”

Judicial remedy is unappealing for the aggrieved individual content creators because it is tedious and costly. And YouTube is afraid of getting caught in a legal wrangle outside the US.

Under the Indian Copyright Act and IT Rules, ANI can potentially bring a suit against YouTube for alleged copyright infringements. It is trigger-happy with litigation in general. Since last year, ANI has brought several suits against large American tech firms. In June 2024 it filed a defamation case against Wikimedia Foundation, the owner of Wikipedia. In November 2024, ANI sued OpenAI. This and the current judicial environment seriously disincentivises YouTube to take ANI on.

Nikhil Narendran, a partner specialising in technology, media, and telecom at the law firm Trilegal, explained, “In India, the intermediary does not have as strong a protection as it would in the rest of the world. Freedom of speech is not as protected in India as it is in the US.”

Platforms such as YouTube that provide space to creators are known as intermediaries.

“Consequently, US corporations often do more to protect speech in the States than they do in India. We, as a society, arguably place less value on free speech compared to many other parts of the world. Hence intermediary processes in India are aimed more at protecting frivolous claims relating to private rights such as copyright or defamation rather than on protecting public interests such as right to free speech or access to knowledge,” he added.

This discrepancy can be seen in what and who YouTube publicly claims that it will protect. YouTube, for instance, clearly states what content categories qualify for copyright exemptions in both the US and the EU. For certain American YouTubers, the company also provides a legal fund of up to $1 million to fight copyright cases in court. For India, YouTube has been ambiguous in stating its obligations for content creators.

With limited protections guaranteed by YouTube, the creators have no choice but to go to court and sue potentially both the platform and ANI. But most content creators face a dilemma.

Even if they believe their use falls within permissible copyright exceptions, in court they would face a highly litigious ANI and YouTube. In this scenario, their channel would remain deleted for 2-3 months with no guarantee of a fair resolution. Conversely, if creators have inadvertently or otherwise exceeded the bounds of fair use, YouTube's threat of channel takedown—depriving them of their sole income stream—leaves them with no choice but to pay up.

YouTubers spoke to The Collective about receiving copyright strikes from ANI for remarkably short clips: one for under ten seconds, another for less than thirty seconds used in the lower portion of a video featuring the creator's face and commentary. Since YouTubers are still in negotiation with ANI they were reluctant to allow us to review all their content that were taken down. We were not able to vet all clips taken down by ANI. But fair use is a highly subjective and tricky problem to adjudicate in India, and it is convenient for YouTube to tango with the big mastheads than duel with them espousing the cause of individual players.

Conversely, some YouTubers admitted they had used ANI clips more extensively, in ways that might not qualify as fair dealing under the Indian Copyright Act.

It is the aggression by ANI that has taken the YouTubers by surprise. One creator put it pithily, “Mujhe pata tha ki ek din ANI, copyright strikes karega, par mujhe laga ki main usse kam paise main nipta lunga”. (I knew I would get copyright strikes. But thought I could get it done with them at lower rate)

There are several complex copyright questions that YouTubers are now left to contend with. Such as, who owns the rights of videos shared by government officials and ministers on social media. Ownership clarity does not exist. 

ANI didn’t answer our question on why its content used by Indian content producers on YouTube channels does not fall under “fair dealing” as defined by the Indian Copyright Act.

The 2024 Lok Sabha elections cemented political critique on YouTube as a lucrative business. With airwaves devoid of any critique of the BJP, citizens made internet stars out of content creators who would dare to take them on. It just takes a good camera, some quick thinking, and news clippings from social media, for people to upload daily videos ripping apart the BJP's and the media for not holding them accountable. And there is good money in it.

A YouTuber who runs a political commentary channel with a few million subscribers explained, “On any average year, I will make Rs 50-60 lakh from YouTube. During elections when engagement was high this figure reached unimaginable heights.”

ANI with its fawning coverage of the BJP, too, was caught in the crosshairs. Wife of ANI owner Sanjiv Prakash, and ANI editor-in-chief Smita Prakash, did a postmortem analysis with Right- leaning intellectuals on how Left-leaning YouTubers had taken hold of political narratives.

Affected Youtubers shared their correspondence with ANI on post-claim settlements. Ishaan Prakash – son of the agency’s editor-in-chief Smita Prakash and Managing Director, Sanjeev Prakash – was marked on conversations with YouTubers as well. ANI did not respond to the specific query on Ishaan Prakash’s role in these negotiations with the YouTubers. 

How this episode evolves with ANI, YouTube and content producers could end up shaping the online news media industry and set the standards for fair usage by deals behind closed doors between entities with unequal negotiating powers, and not by the courts or government.