This is a 2008 case where a writ petition was filed to ban ‘advertisements’ relating to pre-natal sex determination from search engines in India. Section 22 of the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 is the operative provision. In this case, the 'doctrine of auto-block' was an important consideration. In its judgment dated 13th December, 2017, the Court had listed roughly 40 search terms, imposing the aforementioned standard on the respondents, stating that any attempt at looking up the banned search terms would be ‘auto-blocked’. This ruling raised concerns about intermediary liability and free speech. The 'doctrine of auto-block' could block legitimate information relating to reproductive rights and sexual health. To ensure compliance, the Court had also ordered...
The Supreme Court of India recognized in August, 24, 2017, that privacy is a fundamental right guaranteed within article 21 of India's Constitution, that protects life and personal liberty. The judgment recognized that the right of privacy may also be recognized under the other fundamental rights in the Indian Constitution (part III, chapter on fundamental rights). The Indian constitution does not explicitly states a right to privacy in any other specific article. The constitutional foundations of the right to privacy were recognized in the judgement of a number of complaints against the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), set up in 2009 to generate and assign unique 12 digit ID number to residents, named Aadhaar. The project eventually became mandatory and collected a broad range of personal information...
In 2013, lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani filed a petition before the Supreme Court of India challenging Sections 66, 67, 69, 71, 72, 75, 79, 80 and 85 of the Information Technology Act 2000, and seeking a ban on all online pornography. It was also prayed that the consumption and dissemination of pornography be treated as a non-bailable and cognizable offence. The case presents crucial implications for the intermediary liability regime in India, since the petition seeks to impose an additional obligation on ISPs to proactively identify and block all pornographic content, or risk being held liable. During the course of the proceedings, the petitioners approached the Department of Telecommunications with a list of 800 websites alleged to be hosting pornographic content. The websites were blocked without any verification. The ban...
In a progressive judgment, the Delhi High Court held on December 23, 2016, that MySpace, a social networking platform was liable to take down copyright infringed content within 36 hours of “actual knowledge” of the infringement. The case had arisen in 2007 when Super Cassettes Industries Limited filed a suit against MySpace alleging that it allowed its users to upload and share Super Cassette’s copyrighted work without permission. The judgement passed on December 23, 2016, by a division bench of the Court reversed an earlier 2012 of a single bench of the Court that had held MySpace was liable for the infringement despite it having no specific knowledge of the infringement. In the 2016 judgement, the Court held that in case of internet intermediaries, Section 51(a)(ii) of the Copyright Act, 1957 stipulates actual...
(1) The Supreme Court of India issued a landmark decision regarding the constitutionality of several provisions included in the Indian Information Technology Act ("IT Act"). The provisions dealt with content removal online and blocking orders. According to the Supreme Court, vague standards for blocking and removing content online are unconstitutional. Additionally, content blocking must be mandated only by a reasoned order from a judicial, administrative or governmental body and must be transparent. (2) The case was brought before the Supreme Court by two young ladies arrested by the police for posting on a social networking site critical comments about a city shutdown. Actually, one of these two young women just reinforced the original comment by "liking" it. (3) First, the Indian Supreme Court struck down provisions...
A committee consisting of the designated officer and representatives from the ministries of Law and Justice, Home Affairs and Information and Broadcasting and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) examines within seven days all the request received for blocking access to online information according to Section 69(A)(1) of the IT Act (see above). Section 69A of the IT act provides the government with the "power to issue directions for blocking for public access of any information through any computer resource . . . where the Central Government or any of its officers specially authorised by it in this behalf is satisfied that it is necessary or expedient so to do, in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or...