NEW DELHI, Sept 24: Observing that social media, as a modern amphitheatre of ideas, cannot be left in a state of anarchic freedom, the High Court of Karnataka on Wednesday rejected the petition filed by X Corp, (formerly Twitter Inc.), which had challenged blocking orders issued by Central and State authorities under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna, while reading out the judgement, said, “Regulation of information in this domain is neither novel nor unique. The United States regulates it. Every sovereign nation regulates it. India likewise cannot, by any stretch of constitutional imagination, be branded unlawful for doing so.”
“Content on social media must be regulated, particularly in cases of offences against women, failing which the right to dignity of citizens is undermined. We are a society governed by laws. Order is the architecture of our democracy. Every platform that seeks to operate within the jurisdiction of our nation must accept that liberty is yoked with responsibility, and the privilege of access carries with it the solemn duty of accountability,” the Court observed.
Questioning the way that Central and State governments are issuing orders to block content on its platform, X corp had alleged that these actions bypass safeguards laid down by the Supreme Court. The petitioner had also opposed the Centre’s new Sahyog portal, terming it a ‘censorship portal,’ which allows all government agencies — from Union Ministries down to local police stations — to issue blocking orders, using a Central government-issued template.
The Centre had claimed that the petitioner was “attempting to mislead the court by falsely alleging that authorities are passing information blocking orders” under Section 79(3)(d) of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, to circumvent the apex court’s judgement, which allows issuance of information ‘blocking orders’ only under Section 69A of the IT Act.
The Section 79 of the IT Act is a suitably tailored regime, in line with global best practices, which seeks to balance the competing interests of the stakeholders involved, online content creators, intermediaries, and recipients, whilst balancing the legitimate State interests, the Centre has stated in its statement filed before the Court opposing X Corp’s petition.
The Centre has also made it clear that Section 79(3) does not empower the Government to issue information ‘blocking orders” in violation of Section 69A. The company’s claim that Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has issued sample ‘template blocking orders’ is also not correct as none of the communications, either by the MeitY or by the State governments, issued under Section 79, have not used words ‘blocking orders’ but have only mentioned ‘content removal requests/takedown notices’, the Centre had said while alleging that company “is seeking to obfuscate the issue by using wrong terminology to mislead the court.”
(Manas Dasgupta)
