The Union government on Tuesday, July 6 approached the Supreme Court seeking to transfer all cases pertaining to the new IT Rules from various High Courts to the apex court. The controversial rules, which were announced in February as part of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, aim to regulate social media entities such as Facebook and Twitter, OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and digital news publishers like TNM. Since then, multiple organisations and individuals including the TNM’s editor-in-chief Dhanya Rajendran have gone to court challenging the validity of the rules on grounds ranging from right to privacy, freedom of expression and censorship by the state.
The rules have led to a skirmish between the Union government and several global majors such as Facebook and Twitter. The rules have been criticised by the UN’s special rapporteurs on rights issues. Meanwhile, the government has warned that failure to comply with these rules will result in the loss of safe harbour immunity enjoyed by companies over content posted by third parties, including users. The rules dictate that platforms have to delete content as suggested by the authorities within a 36-hour window. Further, the platforms have to publish a monthly compliance report.
In one of the high-profile legal disputes, WhatsApp, a personal messaging platform owned by Facebook, had gone to Delhi HC to contest the rule demanding companies to identify “first originator of information”.
Incidentally, the Delhi High Court earlier in the day slammed Twitter over non-compliance of the rules. The case pertains to tweets posted by opposition MP, Mohua Mitra of the TMC, and journalist Swati Chaturvedi. Earlier, the Delhi Police’s Special Cell had visited the Twitter office in connection with the company labelling tweets by the ruling party BJP’s leaders as “‘manipulated media”.
As earlier reported, India has 53 crore WhatsApp users, 44.8 crore YouTube users, 41 crore Facebook users, 21 crore Instagram users, and 1.75 crore users on Twitter, according to the Union government.