While looking at the face of it, the issue might seem that the blue bird of Twitter is suffocating in India as its intermediatory status is taken away, but is it how it looks? Recently, this matter has been much discussed in the news as the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has decided to take the status of intermediary from Twitter, and that has sparked quite a controversy now, as this was a protection shield given to all social media platforms against any legal proceedings.
According to the IT Act 2000, Part, section 2, Definition subsection (Social media intermediary means an intermediary that primarily or solely enables online
interaction between two or more users and allows them to create, upload, share, disseminate,
modify or access information using its services
in other words it’s like a pigeon which carried information from one person to other person, or a messenger, the only legal immunity they have as an intermediatory is that they represent/Convey the message of one party to another party and bear no responsibility of what is being said, this legal iimmunity/indemnitygiven is very interesting as it saves all the social media platforms and makes sure that they do not have any legal complications and hence provide an online platform for citizens to exercise their freedom of expression, but nothing is absolute in either law or otherwise so there are some reasonable restrictions in the law as well.
In a notification issued by MEITY on 25th of feb 2021, the government has mentioned clearly on page 2,6,6n, section 7 about non-observance of Rules
Non-observance of Rules. —Where an intermediary fails to observe these rules, the provisions of
Sub-section (1) of section 79 of the Act shall not apply to such intermediary, and the intermediary
shall be liable for punishment under any law for the time being in force, including the provisions of the Act
and the Indian Penal Code.
And since now due to non-compliance with the rules prescribed by the GOI by Twitter, the immunity granted by the IT Act 2000 was taken back, resulting in this hue façade.
Implications
Since the status of intermediator is taken back by Govt the implications TwitteroTwitterer as an organisation and as a business are very bad. They are now open to all types of legal proceedings, which include cyber crimes and crimes committed.
For example under It act 2000 article 67 if any obscene content is published on any platform over the internet the individual can be jailed for 5 years or fined up to 1 Lakh or both can be applied on him if he/she is a first time offender, for second time the punishment doubles, earlier these provisions were only applicable on the individual who committed the crime and published such images but after the legal immunity taken back, now automatically an fir will be lodged on twitter for helping the individual propagate such malicious images. Which means twitter or any such social media platform shall cum under the purview of law and legal actions will be initiated as per law.
Not only this, but the doors for all legal proceedings are now open for anyone.
Way out for Twitter
While many news houses have published that once it is activated, govt has no way to roll the decision back, while this information is partially correct, there is always a way to get out of any situation
There are 2 ways for Twitter to come out of this ugly, confrontational situation, which are
clause is section 85 Offenses by companies, subsection 1 of the IT Act 000, which says
Where a person committing a contravention of any of the provisions of this Act or of any rule, direction or order made thereunder is a company, every person who, at the time the contravention was committed, was in charge of, and was responsible to, the company for the conduct of business of the company as well as the company, shall be guilty of the contravention and shall be liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly:
Provided that nothing contained in this sub-section shall render any such person liable to punishment if he proves that the contravention took place without his knowledge or that he exercised all due diligence to prevent such contravention.
Meaning if the company i.e., twitter in this case, successfully convinces that thy wanted to comply with the law but due to unavoidable circumstances they couldn’t do so (as they have been claiming), they can be saved from the immunity been taken away, how ever govt cannot simply revoke the section 79 as the power does not vest with the govt.
The second way is how every filing a petition in the cyber regulation appellant tribunal and present a case before the judge, since tribunals have a time-bound proceeding, they can get the case dispensed with in 30 days of first filing the case (only working days).
What exactly did Twitter not comply with?
Well twitter was given a brief time to comply with the law of the land and this is also mentioned in the notification issued by MEITY on 25th Feb 2021 and also declared loud and clear by Dr Ravi Shankar Prasad in the press conference done by him (available on youtube) the Part-II section 3 of the notification contains all the demands kept by the govt and sufficient time given by govt to comply with those regulations. The document can be accessed here.
While Twitter has now complied with the law and appointed a local grievance redressal officer, it is imperative to see the future course of action taken by either of the parties.
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| Picture credits: Google |
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