New Delhi: A petition has been filed in the Karnataka high court by X (formerly Twitter) challenging use of Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act by the Indian government.
The petition argues that despite a 2015 judgment of the Supreme Court saying that content could only be blocked through a competent court order or under Section 69A’s structured process, the use of Section 79(3)(b) not sets up an illegal parallel content-blocking process in violation to the 2015 court order, reported Hindustan Times.
According to Section 79(3)(b), an intermediary can lose its safe harbour – which protects platforms from liability for third-party content – if it fails to remove or disable access to content upon being informed by the “appropriate” government or its agency.
X also wants protection from the court for not onboarding an employee on Sahyog, a portal that has been created by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to “streamline” Section 79(3)(b) orders. X has termed this portal a “censorship portal”.
In its petition, X has said that this provision does not grant the government blocking powers and that government authorities are misusing this section to bypass the safeguards of Section 69A and arbitrarily censor online content.
After hearing the petition on March 17, Justice M. Nagaprasanna allowed X to approach the court if the government took any “precipitative action” against it.
While the government maintained that no punitive measure has been taken against X till now for refusing to join the Sahyog portal, X told the court that multiple Union ministries, including home, finance, railways and defense, have issued notifications designating nodal officers under Section 79(3)(b) to demand content removals.
X termed these notifications as unconstitutional and demanded that they be quashed.
