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‘Indirect censorship': Digipub moves Karnataka High Court supporting X Corp's plea against takedown orders
The Digipub News India Foundation, a coalition of digital media organisations and independent journalists, Friday made submissions before the Karnataka High Court, supporting X Corp's petition against alleged subjective blocking orders on X issued by Central government officers across the country.
A bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna was hearing the case challenging the blocking orders on X using Section 79 (3)(B) of the Information Technology (IT) Act. X Corp also raised issues with the Sahyog portal for intermediaries, which it has previously referred to as a censorship portal.
Previously, during Tuesday's hearing, X Corp's counsel, senior advocate K G Raghavan, argued that government officials were issuing the takedown orders for social media posts without applying any uniform standard. X Corp has been arguing that these takedown orders can be issued only through the mechanism laid down by the Supreme Court in the case of Shreya Singhal vs Union of India, that is, through Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, and not Section 79 (3)(B).
Raghavan previously argued that 69A had been upheld by the apex court on account of inherent safeguards, while 79(3)(b), which deals with the removal of protection from intermediaries like X, did not have such safeguards.
Senior advocate Aditya Sondhi, representing Digipub, stated, 'X is before the high court as an intermediary….the parties directly affected by the entire exercise that the government has come up with is us….these media organisations are in a dual capacity of providing and receiving content online.' He pointed out that in the exercise of takedown of content by the intermediaries, the content creator in question did not get the chance to be heard.
He also questioned the manner in which Rule (3)(1) (d) of the IT rules, which refers back to Section 79 (3) (b), is being applied, raising the issue of free speech implications. Referring to safe harbour protections of intermediaries being a free speech right, he said, 'It is precisely this, the indirect censorship, that is now being played out through this mechanism. An officer unhappy with a news report etc not palatable to his personal politics, political master morality….sits in his office and says take it down. That is the chilling effect.'
Referring to the current takedown orders as well as the Sahyog platform, Sondhi stated that the situation was that of an 'ad hoc executive regime'. He added, 'A judicial determination of an unlawful act by a duly constituted court of law on the one hand – and a cyclostyled form in the hands of an officer to fill in a couple of blanks, directly infringing Article 19 (1)(a) [freedom of speech].'
The hearing is set to continue on July 17.
