Centre for Internet and Society

You can still get into trouble for online posts: Digital law experts

praskrishna — 2015-04-02T01:44:32Z

The internet in India is freer now, but individuals could still to get into trouble for online posts, say digital media and law experts. Hailing the Supreme Court judgment on Tuesday as a landmark verdict for free speech in India, experts who have closely read the judgment say there is much to be careful about too.

The article by Kim Arora was published in the Times of India on March 30, 2015. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The scrapping of the contentious section doesn't mean that one has a free run, cautions Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society. An online comment can still land you in jail, he says.

"The judgement in no way means that speech on online platforms will be unregulated now. You can still be charged for pornography or voyeurism under the IT Act. There are many provisions in the Constitution and Indian Penal Code that the government can use to target people it wants to go after. You can be still charged for hate speech or defamation - which is a criminal offence in India - for an online comment," says Abraham.

While lawyer Apar Gupta found the judgment to be forward-looking, he pointed to Para 98 of the 120 page judgment, which addresses Article 14 of the Constitution regarding "discrimination" and talks of the distinction between online and other media.

"We make it clear that there is an intelligible differentia between speech on the internet and other mediums of communication for which separate offences can certainly be created by legislation," says the judgment. "The court has indicated that special offences can be created for the internet. Constant vigilance is the price of liberty. We need to constantly engage with these issues to keep the internet free," says Gupta.

The judgment has been praised for making a distinction between online posts and messages that pertain to advocacy, discussion and incitement. "This is an excellent decision. The SC is saying that no matter what the medium, we stand for constitutional rights. The judges were ready to listen, and ready to share their experience of using the internet also," says Mishi Choudhary, legal director at Software Freedom Law Center, adding, "It was a lost opportunity for the Modi government. They should have gotten rid of section 66 A themselves."

Section 69A of the Act, which stands as is, allows non-transparent blocking of online content in the interest of "sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above." However, Choudhary says that since it is a narrowly-drawn provision, it ensures more safeguards.

"It will be noticed that Section 69A unlike Section 66A is a narrowly drawn provision with several safeguards. First and foremost, blocking can only be resorted to where the Central Government is satisfied that it is necessary so to do. Secondly, such necessity is relatable only to some of the subjects set out in Article 19(2). Thirdly, reasons have to be recorded in writing in such blocking order so that they may be assailed in a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution," she says.

Going forward, the government plan of action should focus on balancing safety and freedom on the internet, says Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who himself was one of the petitioners. "The final endgame has to be one where we have a new law or even a new IT Act which meets the twin objectives of a safe and free internet. The two need not be mutually exclusive," he says.

(With inputs from Anand J in Bengaluru)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/times-of-india-march-30-2015-kim-arora-you-can-still-get-into-trouble-for-online-posts

Ericsson v. Kingtech

praskrishna — 2015-03-30T16:33:58Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ericsson-v-kingtech.pdf

February 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-03-30T16:09:05Z

It is my distinct pleasure to share with you the second issue of the CIS newsletter (February 2015).

Earlier this year, I joined the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) as the Research Director. I have been fortunate to periodically work with CIS in various capacities since mid-2012, mostly focusing on the topics of open data, open access, and visual exploration of data. Most importantly perhaps for my present responsibilities, for the last year or so, I have been in communication with various projects teams at CIS and supported their efforts through workshops on research methodologies, and by discussing and co-designing their research questions and approaches.

As the Research Director, I look forward to take these works forward, along with leading the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme, which has been shaped by Prof. Nishant Shah to host an exciting range of critical research initiatives into how the Internet and digital technologies reconfigure social processes and structures, and vice versa. Please keep an eye on the newsletter for further updates from the RAW programme.

Our sincere apologies for the delay in sending out this month's newsletter. We will soon be back in our usual rhythm. The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Sumandro Chattapadhyay
Email: sumandro@cis-india.org

Highlights

Forbes India in an article titled " Minds that (should) matter" names Sunil Abraham as one of the Thinkers who best explain a rapidly-changing India to the world (and the world to India). Errata: This story was shared in the last newsletter but with an error, which is now rectified.

NVDA team organized three workshops during the month for training participants on using eSpeak with NVDA software. The languages covered werePunjabi,Oriya and Hindi.
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Government of India invited comments on the First Draft of India's National IPR Policy. CIS sent its comments . CIS commended the DIPP for this initiative and appreciated the opportunity to provide comments on the National IPR Policy.

CIS sent out three different Right to Information (RTI) requests to find out more details about the constitution and working of the IPR Think Tank to draft the first national IPR Policy.
Anubha Sinha analyses the submission to the DIPP by Academia and Civil Society on the draft National IPR Policy from a public interest perspective.
In an Open Letter to the Prime Minister of India, CIS requests the Government of India to initiate the formation of a patent pool of critical mobile technologies and a five per cent compulsory license.
CIS's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Centre for Indian Languages (CILHE) at TISS, Mumbai conducted a two-day workshop at English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) at Hyderabad on January 28 - 29, 2015. Tejaswini Niranjana captures the developments in a blog post.

Subhashish Panigrahi wrote an op-ed on the endangered languages in India. This was published by Odia daily Samaja on February 21 which is celebrated as the International Mother Language Day.
CIS-A2K team conducted the " Train the Trainer Program" (TTT 2015) at CEO Centre, Dodda Gubbi, Bangalore. About 25 delegates attended the programme.
CIS has joined an international campaign to allow anyone in the world to request whether Britain's intelligence agency GCHQ has illegally spied on them.
On January 30, 2015, Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) held a consultation on Internet governance. A committee was set up to draft a report on Internet governance, with a focus on issues relevant to India. CIS is represented on the committee, and has provided its preliminary comments to ASSOCHAM .

As part of CIS's inquiry into 'Network Neutrality' in the developing world a set of definitions of the term from different sources was collected and published as a blog post.
Namita A. Malhotra in a blog entry examines the figure of the pornographer, as a mixed media figure entrenched in various networks of knowledge production, circulation and consumption.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

February 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; February 28, 2015).

Events Organized

Joint Report on Training of the Use of eSpeak in Hindi with NVDA (Organized by NVDA team; National Association for the Blind, New Delhi, February 5 - 6, 2015 and Blind Relief Association, Delhi, February 13 - 14, 2015).
Report on Training in the use of eSpeak Oriya with NVDA (Organized by NVDA team; Orissa Association for the Blind, Bhubaneswar; February 8 - 10, 2015). Thirty six delegates attended the workshop.
Training of the use of eSpeak Punjabi with NVDA (Organized by NVDA team; Asha Kiran Training Institute, Chandigarh; February 20-21, 2015). The workshop was inaugurated by Shri Tilak Raj, Director, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of Punjab.

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

As part of the Pervasive Technologies project, Rohini Lakshané wrote an Open Letter to India's Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi for creation of a patent pool of critical mobile technologies. And as part of broader Access to Knowledge work CIS submitted comments to DIPP on the National IP Policy.

Blog Entries

National IPR Policy Series: CIS Comments to the First Draft of the National IP Policy (Nehaa Chaudhari, Pranesh Prakash and Anubha Sinha; February 4, 2015). Varnika Chawla assisted the team.
RTI Requests - DIPP: Details on constitution and working of IPR Think Tank (Nehaa Chaudhari; February 9, 2015).
Open Letter to Prime Minister Modi (Rohini Lakshané; February 10, 2015). Copies of the open letter were sent to various ministers.
Academia and Civil Society submit critical comments to DIPP on draft National IPR Policy (Anubha Sinha; February 16, 2015).

Participation in Event

India at Leisure: Media, Culture and Consumption in the New Economy (Organized by Jamia University; January 8 - 10, 2015). Maggie Huang attended the event and presented a paper titled "The Future of Music Streaming: Business Practices and Copyright Management in India". The paper was co-authored by Maggie and Amba Kak.

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Op-ed

Our Endangered Languages (Subhashish Panigrahi; February 21, 2015).

Blog Entries

A Wikipedia Presentation at BITS, Goa (Radhakrishna Arvapally; February 9, 2015). Arvapally was a guest blogger.
Developing Open Knowledge Digital Resources in Indian Languages (Tejaswini Niranjana; February 20, 2015).
Telugu Wikipedia Winter Camp at Andhra Loyola College (Rahmanuddin Shaik; February 26, 2015).

Event Organized

Train the Trainer (Organized by CIS-A2K; CEO Centre, Dodda Gubbi, Bangalore; February 26 - March 1, 2015). Rohini Lakshané took a session on GLAM.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

More online free content in Telugu Wikipedia soon (A.D.Rangarajan; Hindu, February 16, 2015).
Cultural knowledge needs to be more open (Jen Wike Huger; OpenSource.com; February 18, 2015).
Online Free Content in Telugu Wikipedia (Andhra Jyothy; February 19, 2015).

Announcements

2015 Opensource.com Community Awards : Every year, Opensource.com awards people from our community who have excelled in contributing and sharing stories about open source. Subhashish Panigrahi from the CIS-A2K team won the award under the category 'People's Choice Awards'.
CIS-A2K team also published the Telugu Wikipedia Stats tables. Most metrics have been collected from a partial dump (aka stub dump), which contains all revisions of every article, meta data, but no page content.

Participation in Events

Hindi Wiki Community Baithak (Organized by Wikipedia Community; February 14 - 15, 2015). Subhashish Panigrahi attended the event.
An International Conclave of Odia Language (Organized by the Intellects; February 20 - 21, 2015; Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

►Openness

Participation in Events

Regional Open Data Agenda-Setting Workshop 2015 (Organized by Open Data Lab, Jakarta Web Foundation; Jakarta; February 4 - 6, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.
Washington Meet on Open Data (Organized by World Bank; Washington; February 20 - 21, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a speaker and made a presentation on Open Data.

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian goverTnment.

►Privacy

Blog Entries

The Surveillance Industry in India - An Analysis of Indian Security Expos (Divij Joshi; February 19, 2015).
Right to Information (RTI) Requests to BSNL and MTNL Regarding Security Equipment (Maria Xynou; February 25, 2015). CIS had sent RTI requests to MTNL and BSNL in July 2013. MTNL responded recently whereas BSNL has yet to reply.

Announcements

CIS joins Worldwide Campaign to Discover Depth of GCHQ's Illegal Spying (Elonnai Hickok; February 28, 2015). Individuals who wish to take part in this process can sign up at https://www.privacyinternational.org/illegalspying.
Prof. Peng Hwa Ang from Nanyang Technology University visited CIS recently. He had a series of interactions with several researchers at CIS and has prepared a brief visit report. Impressed with the research work of CIS he had discussions with CIS on possible collaborations including publication in more academic journals, collaboration with academic institutions in research projects in Privacy / Data Protection and other areas of Internet Governance. He also discussed on the possible areas where he could contribute to CIS including conduction of training session on writing for academic journals.

►Freedom of Expression

Blog Entries

Requests to ICANN: CIS sent ICANN six requests to ICANN regarding ICANN's expenditure on travels and meetings, granular revenue, cyber-attacks on ICANN, ICANN's implementation of the NETmundial principles, complaints under the Ombudsman process, and information regarding revenues received from gTLD auctions. These were prepared by Geetha Hariharan: DIDP Request #1: ICANN's Expenditures on "Travel & Meetings" ; DIDP Request #2: Granular Revenue/Income Statements from ICANN; DIDP Request #3: Cyber-attacks on ICANN; DIDP Request #4: ICANN and the NETmundial Principles ; DIDP Request #5: The Ombudsman and ICANN's Misleading Response to Our Request ; and DIDP Request #6: Revenues from gTLD auction.

Collection of Net Neutrality Definitions (Tarun Krishnakumar; February 8, 2015). The definitions were compiled by Manoj Kurbet, Maitreya Subramaniam and Tarun Krishnakumar under the guidance of Sunil Abraham.
ICANN accountability, IANA transition and open questions (Geetha Hariharan; February 6, 2015).
Where Does ICANN's Money Come From? We Asked; They Don't Know (Geetha Hariharan; February 9, 2015).
Preliminary Submission on "Internet Governance Issues" to the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India (Geetha Hariharan; February 12, 2015).

►Miscellaneous

A Selection of Tweets on How to Make Crowdmaps Effectual for Mapping Violence against Women (Rohini Lakshané; February 19, 2015).
Reply to RTI Applications filed with respect to Foreign Contractors and Vendors of IT and Telecommunication Enterprises (Lovisha Aggarwal; February 25, 2015).

Event Co-organized

Digital Security Workshop for Journalists (Organized by CIS and Mumbai Press Club; Mumbai Press Club, Azad Maidan, Mumbai; February 7, 2015). Rohini Lakshané conducted the workshop as part of the Cyber Stewards project.

Upcoming Event

Cybersecurity and the Internet of Things (Organized by US Consulate Chennai, Cyber Security & Privacy Foundation and CIS; Hotel Atria, Palace Road, Bangalore; March 19, 2015).

Participation in Events

Winter School on Privacy, Surveillance and Data Protection (Organized by the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG) in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Communication and Information at the University of Hamburg and the Hans Bredow; Delhi; January 19 - 23, 2015). Bhairav Acharya was a facilitator. Errata: This was wrongly mentioned in the last newsletter. We have corrected this.
NetGain: Working Together for a Stronger Digital Society (Organized by Ford Foundation; February 11 - 12, 2015).

---------------------------------
News & Media Coverage
---------------------------------
CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Facebook offers free but limited access to the Internet in India (PC World; February 10, 2015).
Govt may turn to supercomputing for better use of Aadhaar database (Moulishree Srivastava; Livemint; February 10, 2015).
Analytics to help govt read public mood online (Surabhi Talwar; Business Standard; February 10, 2015).
Facebook launches Internet.org in India (Lalatendu Mishra and Sriram Srinivasan; Hindu; February 11, 2015).
Google's war on nude photos goes against user rights (Sahil Mohan Gupta; India Today; February 25, 2015).
Hacking of SIM card by spy agencies raises fears of sensitive documents being leaked (PK Jayadevan and Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; February 25, 2015).
Delhi government in consultation with Centre to block Uber's Internet address (Harsimran Julka; Economic Times; February 25, 2015).
SC reserves judgement in cases against Section 66A (Shreeja Sen; Livemint; February 26, 2015).

Researchers at Work

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Event Organized

Innovative Infrastructures for Research and Pedagogy in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences and Humanities (Co-organized by Centre for Study of Culture and Society and CIS, Bangalore): The RAW programme organized a consultation to discuss and conceptualise an upcoming project. The project will be hosted by the RAW programme.

Blog Entry

Figures of Learning: The Pornographer (Namita A. Malhotra; February 28, 2015).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/february-2015-bulletin

SECTION 66A: DELETE

praskrishna — 2015-03-30T01:32:18Z

The Supreme Court has killed a law that allowed the Government to control social media. What’s the Net worth of freedom hereafter?

The article by Kumar Anshuman was published in the Open Magazine on March 27, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

It was in 2009 that Section 66A was added as an amendment to India’s IT Act by the then UPA Government, but it took three years before it came to the notice of Shreya Singhal, a student of Law at Delhi University. By then, the Section had already earned itself a fair amount of notoriety for how much leeway it provided for the police and politicians to abuse the law.

The first time was in September 2011 when Musafir Baitha, a famous poet and government employee in Bihar, was suspended from his job because he criticised the state government on Facebook. An uproar followed, as people realised that freedom of speech in social media could now be construed as a criminal activity. Ambikesh Mahapatra, a professor at Jadavpur Unversity, became a target of the Mamata Banerjee government in April 2012 when he made cartoons of her. In September 2012, cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was arrested in Mumbai for a caricature of corruption under the UPA. But the case that caught Shreya Singhal’s attention was perhaps the most shocking of all. In November 2012, after Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray’s death, Shaheen Dhada, a Thane resident, posted a comment on her Facebook page criticising the near-total shutdown of Mumbai for the funeral. She wrote that Mumbai was shut not in respect, but fear, and that a leader should earn respect instead of forcing it out of people. Her friend Renu Srinivasan ‘liked’ this post. Hours later, both were arrested and booked under Section 66A. "I was shocked when I heard of this news," Singhal says, "I went and checked the post and there was nothing which could have provoked such an outrage." Her mother, Manali Singhal, a lawyer at the Supreme Court, advised her to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against the Section.

The case continued for two years in the Supreme Court, while arbitrary arrests continued to be made. The UPA Government first defended 66A in court, taking the position that the current NDA Government took as well. It argued that the law would be used only in extreme cases where a person overreaches his or her online freedom to curtail the rights of others. Unconvinced, on 24 March, the apex court struck 66A down, saying that it could not allow such a law to exist on mere government assurances. The Court found several terms in the Act, such as ‘grossly offensive’ and ‘insult’, that were not clearly defined and could be interpreted arbitrarily to suit one’s convenience. ‘It is clear that Section 66A is unconstitutionally vague and it takes away a guaranteed freedom,’ observed the bench of Justice J Chelameswar and Justice Rohinton Nariman.

"We can celebrate the scrapping of Section 66A, but with caution," says Sunil Abraham, executive director at The Centre for Internet & Society in Bangalore. "[As for] those who are booked under Section 66A, the police also imposes different sections of the Indian Penal Code to justify their arrest." There are examples to support his statement, a recent one being the arrest of a Bareilly-based student, Gulrez Khan, who had posted a picture on Facebook of UP minister Azam Khan along with some derogatory comments about Hindus that he allegedly made. Gulrez Khan denied the comments, saying that his image was being maligned. The boy was arrested and booked. "People are making it out as a moment of triumph against the UP government. The fact is this boy had been arrested under Section 153A and 504 of the IPC along with Section 66A of the IT Act. We have said this even in the Supreme Court," says Gaurav Bhatia, a spokesperson of the Samajwadi Party and also a senior advocate.

But the import of scrapping Section 66A is that there is now one less law that can be misused, one that specifically stifles online freedom. "It’s an excellent judgment," says Lawrence Liang of Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore. “It couldn’t have been better than this. The fact that the apex court termed it ‘vague and overreaching’ signifies how important it was to scrap this."

Once the 122-page judgment arrived, there was a rush to welcome it—even by those who were responsible for Section 66A to begin with. Former Congress minister Kapil Sibal was one of them. "The Supreme Court has scrapped Section 66A to allow freedom of speech in cyberspace and we should welcome it,” he said. His former cabinet colleague P Chidambaram went to the extent of saying that it was poorly drafted. But the Congress as a party also warned of the possible misuse of this freedom, saying that it had woven various safeguards into Section 66A, including the condition that an arrest could only be made after an officer of the level of Inspector General or Superintendent of Police had okayed it. "The Supreme Court, it appears, has not found the safeguards sufficient," says Congress spokesperson and senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi. “It is now up to the current Government [to decide] how to strike the right balance between freedom of speech on one hand and [prevention of] abuse and hounding of groups or individuals through obscene or incorrigibly false information [on the other] to deter unbridled defamation in cyberspace." The Left parties, which were supporting the UPA Government back when Section 66A was imposed, have expressed happiness over the verdict. “The draconian provision of 66A was used to arrest people who express dissenting views against the Government and the State and to suppress criticism of those in power,” says senior CPM leader Sitaram Yechury.

The NDA Government has also welcomed the verdict. "The Government absolutely respects the right to freedom of speech and expression on social media and has no intention of curbing it," says Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Information Technology.

But the scrapping of the Section leaves the Government with very little power to act against real abuse of online freedoms. Like Congress leader Milind Deora says, "An unregulated internet can be more dangerous than a regulated one." This argument is easily countered: there are enough provisions in existing laws that prevent a person from misusing freedom of speech. Says Apar Gupta, a senior lawyer, “Section 66A was a bailable section and arrests were made only with further imposition of IPC acts." While Article 19 (1) of the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, at the same time Article 19 (2) provides a list of reasonable restrictions on freedom of speech. This is enough, experts believe, to curtail misuse of the internet. The court judgment also grants the Centre the freedom to enact any other law specific to the internet, provided it does not violate the provisions of freedom of speech as laid down by the Constitution of India.

This does, however, put a question mark on the necessity of Section 66A to begin with, if existing laws were quite enough to address freedom-of- speech abuses. "Section 66A of the IT Act, 2000, was enacted to prevent online abuse and hounding of groups and individuals, check the propagation of obscene or incorrigibly false information with the intent to create social divides and unrest, and deter unbridled defamation in cyberspace. This Act came into effect in 2008 when social media was yet evolving," says Singhvi. But experts disagree with this argument. "It is a perfect case of confusion and mixing up of facts,” says Sunil Abraham. “The purpose of this law was to curb unsolicited messages, spamming and harassing someone through fake identities in the internet space." He says that the Government claimed to borrow law provisions from the US, Canada and other countries, but the legislation was so poorly drafted that it didn’t have any teeth for action against spammers. "Even words like ‘unsolicited commercial mails’ were not included in the Act and that is the reason not a single person has been arrested in India for spam mails even after this Act came into being."

A section of the Indian legal fraternity believes that the country’s apex court should also have made a statement about the problem of spamming and harassment on the internet.

But there is bad news too. The same judgment that struck down Section 66A has upheld Section 69A of the IT Act as constitutionally valid. This allows the Government to block any website which it deems a direct threat to public order and security that might spread propaganda.

"In this case, the Government [can decide] to block a website without notifying [it with any] reason for it. If I am an internet user who wants to visit this site, I am also not notified why that website has been taken down. It is just the whims and fancies of a few officials in the Government, what to block and what not," says Apar Gupta. Using the section, the Union Government had blocked 32 websites just this January, saying that anti- national groups were using these websites for ‘jihadi propaganda’.

All major democracies have some form of legal net regulation. "Laws in foreign jurisdictions vary widely as per the guarantees of civil rights afforded to citizens in any legal system," adds Gupta. "The legislations of the United States, which borrowed certain phrases in Section 66A, have already been declared unconstitutional. In the United Kingdom, similar phrases have come under fierce critique and have been limited by guidelines issued by the office of prosecutions. In these jurisdictions, as in India, existing criminal law applies equally to online speech as much as to offline."

Also, while social media enthusiasts rejoice over their first big victory against restrictions on online freedom of speech, the internet is still a matter of great concern for any government, thanks to its reach and influence. The Union Government walks a thin line while dealing with instances of abuse on social media, and many believe India needs an IT Act drafted in proper consultation with all stakeholders.

For now, a young law student has found a place in the legal history of India. "It will always be remembered as Shreya Singhal vs Union of India," says Singhal.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ACT

‘66A. Punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc. Any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device:

Any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; or
Any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will, persistently by making use of such computer resource or a communication device;
Any electronic mail or message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages...

shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and with fine’

SUPREME COURT ORDER

‘In conclusion, we may summarise what has been held by us: Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 is struck down in its entirety being violative of Article 19(1)(a) and not saved under Article 19(2)’

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/open-magazine-march-27-2015-kumar-anshuman-section-66a-delete

Bangla Wiki turns 10

praskrishna — 2015-04-04T16:10:12Z

The 10th anniversary of Bengali Wikipedia was marked with a a gathering of Wikipedians of vernacular languages from across the country and beyond at Jadavpur University. Bengali is one of 20 Indian languages to have a Wikipedia presence. The event also celebrated 14 years of the mother edition in English of the open-access, crowd-sourced online encyclopaedia.

Contributed by Sudeshna Banerjee, Showli Chakraborty and Abhinanda Datta the story published in the Telegraph on March 29, 2015 quotes T. Vishnu Vardhan.

"We hear of digital divide all the time. Here it is about digital inclusiveness. The University Grants Commission talks of four factors to make a good university - access, equity, quality and employability. What a teacher cannot give in class, he can offer on the world wide web. The question of quality in Wikipedia can be addressed through workshops like this," said Calcutta University registrar Basab Chaudhuri.

Wikimedia Foundation trustee Bishakha Datta spoke of the uneasy relationship between Wikipedia and academia, especially over authenticity.

"Yes, we do not use original research. So our articles are not admissible as primary sources. At the same time, every piece of information in a Wikipedia article has to be cited and annotated. It is great that an institution like JU has come forward to host us," said Datta, thanking the university's School of Languages and Linguistics.

Joint registrar Sanjay Gopal Sarkar argued in favour of the existence of Wikipedia articles in the vernacular. "It is a part of the empowerment of my mother tongue."

Quantity was a problem, he said. "It is not enough to have 33,000 articles (the English version has 4.7 million). Workshops need to be held in Bengal and Assam on how to write articles. If Wikipedia and the universities join hands, a battalion of writers and editors can be created."

The Bangladeshi delegates revealed how Wikipedia's mission of making knowledge free was getting a technological boost back home. "Grameenphone and Bangla Link, two of our biggest mobile service providers, have made Facebook and Wikipedia free. Subscribers just have to log on to specific domains (0.facebook.com and zero.wikipedia.org) to see picture-less texts," said Ankan Ghosh Dastidar, a Class XI student from Dhaka.

Vishnu Vardhan from the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, urged for more institutional tie-ups so that instead of stopping students from going to Wikipedia, teachers would integrate their contributions to Wikipedia in the course. "Andhra Loyola College is the largest contributor to Telegu Wikipedia," he said. Hindi, he added, has the maximum articles among Indian languages, followed by Tamil and Telugu. "But Malayalam has the most active Wikipedians - around 100."

A workshop was held to teach how to type in Bengali and edit the Bengali Wikipedia. Techno India student Ayan Chaudhury addressed queries on downloading the Avro font and typing tricky conjoined letters in Bengali, as also how to create cross references and highlight terms. "Ask yourself two questions when you want to add any information: Is it relevant? Can it be verified? Also do not blindly turn on Google Translate. The quality of its translation is such that a word like 'swipe' becomes ' dhum dhadakka'."

A group editing session took place on the second day with 15 volunteers translating articles from the English Wikipedia and adding new articles in Bengali. Some also worked on Wiktionary, an online dictionary, and others on Wikisource, typing out pages of seminal texts outside copyright.

Crafts for a cause

Artisans from Bengal and Bangladesh joined hands to participate in a handcrafted jewellery and handloom exhibition organised by WIIN (Women and Infants in Need) at Shree Art Gallery in Ballygunge on March 25 and 26.

"The proceeds will be donated to Paripurnata, a home for women with mental disabilities (off EM Bypass). We emphasise on mental health awareness programmes and try and create job opportunities for the residents at Paripurnata. This helps in building their confidence and creates a sense of social acceptance," said Nilanjana Mukherjee, the general secretary of WIIN and Paripurnata.

The exhibition was inaugurated by actress Sonali Gupta, who plays Satyabati to Dhritiman Chaterji's Byomkesh Bakshi in Sajarur Kanta. "This cause is close to my heart. We must come together to help women and infants in need," said Gupta.

The exhibition showcased a collection of saris and jewellery from the Rajshahi district in Bangladesh, quirky handbags, hand-painted mugs, kurtas and dupattas.

Trilingual road trip

An independent film - or indie - by two graduates of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) has hit theatres this Friday. Titled Yahan Sabki Lagi Hai (Everybody Gets Screwed Here), the 100-minute trilingual (English, Hindi and Bengali) black comedy is directed by Calcutta girl Tina A. Bose and Mumbai boy Cyrus R. Khambata.

Produced by Vibrant Works, the film revolves around Kesang and Bharat, who are on their way to a birthday party but their road trip soon turns into a disaster as they find themselves in the middle of a jungle, robbed of all their belongings.

Road trip gone wrong has been done before, but according to the young film-makers, "while most of them have been horror or slasher films, ours travels the philosophical path and focuses on the issues we face in life."

The lead actress is a Tibetan girl, Eden Shyodhi. "We wanted to cast a girl from a minority community. We needed someone who was weird and interesting as the character of Kesang is very unusual. And when we met Eden, she had flaming red hair, just like how we had envisioned Kesang!" said Tina, who has studied in Lady Brabourne College and Jadavpur University. The cast also includes stand-up comedian Varun Thakur and Bengali actor Heerok Das, previously seen in Egaro.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/the-telegraph-march-29-2015-bangla-wiki-turns-ten

India backs open source software for e-governance projects

praskrishna — 2015-04-04T16:00:49Z

India has said it will use open source software in all e-governance projects, though it did not rule out the use of proprietary software to meet specialized requirements.

The blog post originally published by IDG News Service was mirrored on the website of CIO and PC World on March 29, 2015. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

A policy document released by the federal government over the weekend makes it mandatory for all new e-governance projects and upgrades of existing legacy systems by federal agencies and participating states to first consider free and open source software (OSS) alternatives.

Federal and state agencies must make it mandatory for suppliers to give OSS a preference over proprietary or closed source software while responding to requests for proposals. ”Suppliers shall provide justification for exclusion of OSS in their response,” according to the policy statement posted to the website of the Ministry for Communication & Information Technology.

The Indian government has outlined its Digital India program that aims to make government services accessible online to citizens in their localities. The need to expand these services quickly at a low cost has likely prompted the decision in favor of open source in the country.

The government has also cited “strategic control” over its e-governance applications and systems from a long-term perspective as one of the reasons it was backing open source.

“It is a well drafted policy though policy researchers will always have possible improvements,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a research organization in Bangalore. Instead of coming up with a new definition for free and open source software, the policy should have used the definitions available at the Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative websites and adopted licenses approved by these organizations, he added.

The policy should also require that the software be made available on a public code repository except in cases where there are some security concerns, Abraham said.

The federal government had previously declined to take a stand in favor of open source, leaving the choice to its agencies, but the National Policy on Information Technology, 2012 had mentioned the promotion of “open source and open technologies” as one of its objectives.

Some states have backed open source software on ideological grounds or to cut costs. Kerala, for example, had decided to promote free and open-source software in education as way back as 2006.

The government in its new policy has, however, provided for exemptions in certain specialized domains for which OSS may not be available, or if there isn’t expertise in the particular area in open source. The requirement for OSS may also be waived if the deployment is strategic and urgent.

Google, which has shown interest in collaborating with the government in its e-governance projects, said it did not have a comment on the policy. Microsoft, which targets the government market, including with its cloud services, did not immediately comment. In a bid to woo Indian government customers, the company offered in September to host cloud services including Azure and Office 365 in the country.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/idg-news-service-march-29-2015-john-riberio-india-backs-open-source-software-for-e-governance-projects

4th IPR Researchers Confluence

praskrishna — 2015-04-04T06:15:08Z

Maggie Huang attended the event organized by Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai and National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai with support from Ministry of Human Resource Development, New Delhi on March 27 and 28, 2015.

Maggie Huang presented intermediary findings of the research entitled "India’s Music Copyright Management in the Age of Music Streaming" positing streaming services as the 'frugal innovation' due to its low price tier. See Maggie's presentation here. For more information on the event, click here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/fourth-ipr-researchers-confluence

India's landmark online speech ruling is step toward greater press freedom

praskrishna — 2015-03-29T00:55:35Z

In an historic decision, India's Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down part of a law used to silence criticism and free expression. While this marks a pivotal victory that has been welcomed in many quarters, many challenges remain for press freedom in the country.

The blog post by Sumit Galhotra was published by CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) on March 28, 2015. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Section 66A of the Information Technology Act--the vaguely worded provision struck down by the court--criminalized online speech deemed "grossly offensive" or "menacing," along with information for the purpose of causing "annoyance" or "inconvenience." Individuals convicted under the provision could face up to three years in prison. This law, along with others that remain on the books, has allowed India to become a paradise for the offended.

The law was challenged by a public interest litigation mounted by Shreya Singhal, in 2012. Singhal, who had just returned to Delhi from her studies in the U.K., was infuriated at how the law was being used to stifle debate and criticism in her home country, according to reports.

The September 2012 arrest of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi, on a range of charges including one under Section 66A, over his cartoons on politics and corruption, caught Singhal's attention. A few weeks later, she learned of the arrest of 21-year-old Shaheen Dhada, who questioned on Facebook the shutdown of Mumbai following the death of a politician, Singhal said. Dhada's friend, Renu Srinivasan, who had merely "liked" the comment, was arrested under the law. According to news reports, both were charged. These cases sparked a national debate on the space for free expression in the world's largest democracy, and led Singhal to challenge the law, she told reporters.

"It's a big victory," Singhal, who is currently studying law in Delhi, told the media following Tuesday's decision. "The Internet is so far-reaching and so many people use it now, it's very important for us to protect this right."

India is expected to overtake the U.S. as the second largest population of Internet users in the world, behind only China, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a nonprofit group representing the Web and mobile industry. As Internet usage accelerates in India, thanks in large part to the widespread use of mobile devices, there has been an ongoing debate on how best to policeit in a country that has to contend with frequent episodes of violence, civil unrest, and terrorist attacks.


Karuna Nundy, an advocate at the Supreme Court of India who helped the legal challenge, says the country has several laws that are a threat to press freedom. (Geoffrey King)

Lawrence Liang, a lawyer and researcher at the Bangalore-based Alternative Law Forum, an Indian legal research organization, shared in Singhal's welcoming of the decision. "It is important to note that this is the first judgment in decades in which the Supreme Court has struck down a legal provision for violating freedom of speech, and in doing so, it simultaneously builds upon a rich body of free speech cases in India and paves the way for a jurisprudence of free speech in the 21st century, the era of the Internet and social media," he told CPJ.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, an organization that focuses on issues of digital pluralism, called the judgment "a moral victory." He said the decision "furthers free speech jurisprudence in India, but also in all those other countries where an Indian precedent would be important," including many countries in Asia, and places such as South Africa.

As part of the judgment, the court narrowed its reading of Section 79 of the IT Act, under which private parties could submit notice-and-takedown orders directly to Internet intermediaries. The court held that intermediary liability can be pursued only through a court order or other government order, reports said.

Liang told CPJ the judgment falls short in some areas. The Supreme Court's 123-page judgment kept in place Section 69A of the IT Act and Information Technology Rules 2009 that allows the government to block websites if the content in question has the potential to create communal discord, social disorder, or impact India's relations with other countries, according to news reports.

"I would say that if there is missed opportunity in the judgment, it is the clarification of the process of blocking websites. If Section 66A was found to be arbitrary in that its scope covered protected and unprotected speech, then the procedure for blocking websites as laid out in Section 69A is also beset with similar problems," Liang said.

According to Chinmayi Arun, research director at the Centre for Communications Governance at the National Law University in Delhi, the 2009 rules require blocking requests and implementation to be kept confidential. "This means that speakers will have no way of finding out that the government has ordered intermediaries to block their content. Speakers will therefore not be able to question unconstitutional blocking orders before the judiciary--this is a clear interference with their constitutional rights," she told CPJ via email, referring to online users who could fall foul of the law.

Academic in me: As a matter of legal & constitutional analysis, the SC judgment is at its best on #66A, but weaker on 69A & weakest on 79.
-- Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) March 24, 2015

For some journalists, the decision highlights how virtually no national party in India, including the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is a champion of these rights. In a piece for independent news website Scroll, journalist Shivam Vij criticizes the current Narendra Modi-led government for missing an opportunity by not acting decisively to address the problematic law. "It has become routine for India's politicians to avoid taking tough political decisions if they can be left to the courts," he said. "When in power, the BJP is as happy as the Congress to have at its disposal laws that can muzzle voices of dissent."

Trivedi told CPJ he agreed that the previous and current government did little to address abuses of the law. Trivedi, who up until the court decision, faced charges under Section 66A, and had joined Singhal as a petitioner in the case, added: "This decision marks a strong first step." The cartoonist's lawyer, Vijay Hiremath, told CPJ that the Section 66A charge has now been removed, but Trivedi still faces charges under the National Emblem Act.

While the striking down of Section 66A is a step in the right direction, many challenges remain for press freedom in India. Karuna Nundy, an advocate at the Supreme Court of India, who was at the forefront of the legal challenge, told CPJ numerous colonial-era laws, particularly in India's penal code, continue to pose threats to free speech and press freedom in India. CPJ has long documented cases of Indian journalists being threatened with sedition, defamation, and laws that criminalize "outraging religious sentiment."

Actually, next step(s): a review of the constitutionality of sedition, challenge criminal defamation, constitutionalise civil defamation.
-- Gautam Bhatia (@gautambhatia88) March 24, 2015

But Nundy expressed optimism for the challenges ahead for press freedom in India and elsewhere. She said the judgment shows, "If you do the work, you take the trouble, you make the challenge, you can achieve the kinds of values that you stand for. That is the work that is the duty of all us as national citizens and citizens of the world."

[Geoffrey King, CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator, contributed to this report from Manila]

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cpj-march-28-2015-sumit-galhotra-indias-landmark-online-speech-ruling-is-step-toward-greater-press-freedom

66A DEAD. LONG LIVE 66A!

praskrishna — 2015-04-01T02:11:27Z

Last Tuesday, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo walked into Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office. India's most compulsive and most-followed tweeter, Modi, as Gujarat chief minister, had protested when the Manmohan Singh government blocked the micro-blogging site of a few journalists. Modi had blacked out his own Twitter profile and tweeted: “May God give good sense to everyone.”

The article by Soni Mishra was published in the Week on March 28, 2015. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.

Today, with 11 million followers on Twitter, and 27.6 million likes on Facebook, Modi rules the virtual world and India. He received Costolo warmly and told him how Twitter could help his Clean India, girl child and yoga campaigns. Impressed, Costolo told Modi how Indian youth were innovating on Twitter.

But, the greatest and the most fundamental boost for all social media in India was being effected a few minutes drive away from the PMO. Ironically, in the Supreme Court of India, Modi's lawyers were defending a law made by the United Progressive Alliance government—section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which curbed free speech on social media.

Anything posted on the internet can go viral worldwide and reach millions in no time, argued Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta. While the traditional media is ruled by licences and checks, social media has nothing, he said. Finally, Mehta made an impassioned plea that the government meant well. Section 66A will be administered reasonably and will not be misused, he assured the court.

It seemed he, and the government, had forgotten an old saying: if there is a bad law, someone will use it. Luckily for India, and its liberal democracy, the judges saw a bad law and struck it down. “If section 66A is otherwise invalid, it cannot be saved by an assurance from the learned additional solicitor general,” said the bench comprising Justice Rohinton Nariman and Justice J. Chelameswar.

The fact is that 66A was knee-jerk legislation. Almost as thoughtless and compulsive as a netizen's derisive tweet. On December 22, 2008, the penultimate day of the winter session, the UPA government had got seven bills passed in seven minutes in the Lok Sabha; the opposition BJP had played along.

One of the bills was to amend the IT Act. It went to the Rajya Sabha the next day, when members were hurrying to catch their trains and flights home for the year-end vacation. They just okayed the bill and hurried home.

The argument then was that there was no need to discuss the bill as it had been examined by a standing committee of Parliament. Indeed, it had been. But, the committee, headed by Nikhil Kumar of the Congress, had met only for 23 hours and five minutes. Nine of its 31 members had not attended a single meeting. Ravi Shankar Prasad, the current Union minister for IT, was one among the 31.

Apparently, everyone wanted the bill, so did not bother to apply their minds. Only a CPI(M) member, A. Vijayaraghavan, had a few dissenting suggestions to the committee report. No one else bothered to mull over a law that was “unconstitutional, vague” and which would have a “chilling effect” on free speech.

Once the law was made, it was constable raj across India. Shaheen Dhada from Palghar simply commented on Facebook about a Shiv Sena bandh on the death of Bal Thackeray. Her friend Rinu Srinivasan liked it. The two teenagers were bundled into a police station. Rinu still remembers with a chill how “a mob of about 200 people gathered outside the police station that day.” This was when the Congress was ruling Maharashtra.

Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra was picked up by the police in Trinamool Congress-ruled West Bengal in April 2012, for posting a cartoon ridiculing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. “I was thrashed several times in police custody,” said the professor, who got relief from the West Bengal Human Rights Commission.

Vickey Khan, 22, was arrested in Rampur, UP, for a Facebook post on Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan. Rampur is, of course, Khan's pocket borough. The Uttar Pradesh Police, controlled by the Samajwadi Party government, also arrested dalit writer Kanwal Bharti from Rampur for criticising the UP government's suspension of IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal in 2013.

At least 30 people in AIADMK-ruled Chennai have been booked under 66A; four of them this year. Ravi Srinivasan, general secretary of the Aam Aadmi Party in Puducherry, was picked up in October 2012 for his tweets on Karti Chidambaram, son of then Union home minister P. Chidambaram. “He was not even in India when I tweeted,” said Ravi. “He sent the complaint by fax from abroad and everything happened [fast] as Puducherry is a Union Territory and can be controlled by the home ministry.”

Whistleblower A. Shankar of Chennai was pulled up by the Madras High Court for the content on his blog, Savukku. The Orissa Police, controlled by the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government, took Facebook to court in 2011 asking who created a Facebook page in the name of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. It is another thing that the page had no content.

Indeed, there had been stray political voices opposing the law. In Parliament, the CPI(M)'s P. Rajeeve, the BJD's Jay Panda and independent MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar pushed several times for scrapping 66A. Panda moved a private members bill, and Rajeeve moved a resolution. “I only wish we in Parliament had heeded the people's voice and repealed it, instead of yet again letting the judiciary do our work for us,” Panda said after the law was scrapped.

Finally, it was left to a young law student, Shreya Singhal, to move the Supreme Court on behalf of the Palghar girls. Singhal pointed out that several provisions in 66A violated fundamental rights guaranteed by article 19(1)(a)—the right to freedom of speech and expression. Several more cases followed and, finally, the court heard them together.

Indeed, Justices Nariman and Chelameswar have been extremely restrained in their comments. But, the fact that Parliament had not applied its mind comes through in the judgment.

The court “had raised serious concerns with the manner in which section 66A of the IT Act has been drafted and implemented across the country,” pointed out Supreme Court lawyer Shivshankar Panicker. Added Kiran Shanmugam, a cyber forensic expert and CEO of ECD Global Bengaluru: “The law lacked foresight in estimating the magnitude of the way the electronic media would grow.”

Apparently the government, too, knew it was defending the indefensible, and tried to win the case highlighting the benign nature of the democratic state. But, the court was not impressed. “Governments may come and governments may go, but section 66A goes on forever,” the judges noted. “An assurance from the present government, even if carried out faithfully, would not bind any successor government.”

Clearly, Mehta was defending the indefensible, a law that, the court found, would have a “chilling effect on free speech”. Moreover, as the judges found out, the new law did not provide even the safeguards that the older Criminal Procedure Code had provided. “Safeguards that are to be found in sections 95 and 96 of the CrPC are also absent when it comes to section 66A,” the judges said. For example, according to the CrPC, a book or document that contained objectionable matter could be seized by the police, but it also allowed the publisher to move court. The new law did not provide even such a cushion.

All the same, the court was careful and did not overturn the entire law. It scrapped section 66A, and section 118(D) of the Kerala Police Act, but upheld section 69A and section 79 of the IT Act, which too had been questioned by the litigants (see box on page 45).

The judgment has set the cyberworld rocking. “I am so happy now, I do not know how to express it,” said Rinu, now an audio-engineering student in Kerala. Shaheen is married and lives in Bengaluru. Vickey Khan is relieved. “Some people had told me that I could be jailed for three years,” he said. But, Azam Khan took it out on the media and said it “favours criminals”.

Karti, who claims to be a votary of free speech, however, wants “some protection” against defamation. “I filed a complaint in an existing provision of law,” he said. “If that provision is not available, then I will have to seek other provisions to safeguard my reputation.”

Mahapatra is still apprehensive. “The government will still try to harass me,” he said. “But I know that in the end I will win.” Shankar of Chennai called it “a huge relief for people like me, who are active on social media.” Ravi Srinivasan, who locked horns with Karti, said he felt “relieved and happy”.

The hard rap on the knuckles for their legislative laxity has sobered the political class. The Congress, the progenitor of 66A, admitted that the vagueness of the law was its undoing. “If in a particular area, the local constabulary took action to stifle dissent, it was never the purpose of the act,” said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi. The Modi government officially welcomed the judgment, and its spokespersons are blaming the UPA for the law.

Apparently, the scrapped law was made after a series of grossly offensive posts appeared on the social media five years ago. “If such content is not blocked online, it would immediately lead to riots,” said a law ministry official, who said the posts had been shown to the court, too. He said the government would take some time to draft a new law.

But, is a new law required? Opinion is still divided. What if someone is defamed on the net? “There are defamation laws which can deal with these,” said T. Vishnuvardhan, programme director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. “Also, the IT Act has various provisions. If somebody misuses your picture on social media, you can report it to the website immediately. The website is liable to take action on it within 36 hours.”

Smarika Kumar of Bengaluru-based Alternative Law Forum said the scrapping of 66A does not mean one can post anything online. “The Supreme Court has said that speech can be censored when it falls under the restrictions provided under article 19(2) of the Constitution,” she said. “But, if you prevent speech on any other ground, it is going to be unconstitutional.”

But, even critics of 66A think a replacement law is needed. Said Rajeev Chandrasekhar: “The government needs to act quickly and create a much more contemporaneous Act, via multi-stakeholder consultations, general consensus and collaboration, so that there is less ambiguity and freedom of expression is preserved.”

Senior Supreme Court advocate Pravin H. Parekh said, “As the cyberworld is growing day by day and there is increase in the number of social media users, we do require a proper mechanism which can regulate the expression of views on the internet.”

The government is putting forth the argument of national security. “If the security establishment says the present act is not sufficient, we will look into it. The government will consider it, but only with adequate safeguards,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad.

That will call for a legislative process undertaken in a cool and calm house, and not hurried through when the members are ready to hurry home.

Sound judgment

Thumbs down
The Supreme Court set aside section 66A of the IT act, which says any person who sends offensive, menacing or false information to cause annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will, or uses email to trouble its recipient or deceive him/her about the origin of such messages, can be punished with a jail term up to three years and a fine.

The court also struck down section 118(d) of the Kerala Police Act, which says any person who makes indecent comments by calls, mails, messages or any such means causing grave violation of public order or danger can be punished with imprisonment up to three years or a fine not exceeding Rs10,000, or both.

Thumbs up
The Supreme Court upheld section 69A of the IT act, which allows the government to block the public's access to information in national interest and penalise intermediaries [telecom or internet service providers and web hosting services] who fail to comply with the government's directives.

Section 79 of the IT Act, which deals with intermediaries' exemption from liability in certain cases, too, was upheld.

With R. Prasanan, Mini P. Thoma, Ajay Uprety, Lakshmi Subramanian, Rabi Banerjee and Sharmista Chaudhury

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-week-march-28-2015-soni-mishra-66a-dead-long-live-66a

SC has set a high threshold for tolerance: Lawrence Liang

praskrishna — 2015-03-28T16:18:18Z

Lawyer-activist Lawrence Liang on why SC upheld section 69A and the implications of striking down section 66A.

The article by Dhamini Ratnam was published in Livemint on March 28, 2015. Lawrence Liang gave his inputs.

Tuesday marked a landmark in the fight for free speech in our country, as the Supreme Court struck down the contentious section 66A of the Information Technology Act of 2000. The section, which was introduced through an amendment in 2009, penalized those who wrote messages online that could be deemed as being false or grossly offensive. However, the apex court turned down a plea to strike down sections 69A (procedure for blocking websites) and 79 (exemption from liability of intermediaries) of the same law. Lawrence Liang, a lawyer who co-founded the Alternative Law Forum in Bengaluru, a fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, and author of The Public is Watching: Sex, Laws and Videotape and A Guide to Open Content Licenses, spoke in an interview on the wide-ranging implications of the judgement. Edited excerpts:

What was the impetus to fight section 66A?

Over the past few years, there have been numerous cases in which section 66A has been used in bad faith against individuals online. One of the cases that became well-known by virtue of just how ridiculous it was involved the arrest of Shaheen Dhada and her friend Renu Srinivasan (which led petitioner Shreya Singhal to file a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court that eventually led to this judgement), but there have been more, so it was inevitable that a law as draconian as section 66A would be challenged for its constitutional validity.

The judgement begins by noting a distinction between three forms of speech—discussion, advocacy and incitement—and says discussion and advocacy of a particular cause, howsoever unpopular, is at the heart of Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution (all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression). Only when they reach the level of incitement can they be legitimately prohibited. While the judgement does not provide a new definition of incitement, it affirms what was laid down in the Rangarajan test (1989), in which the courts had established that for censorship to be justified, the “expression of thought should be intrinsically dangerous to the public interest”. There should be an immediate and direct relation between speech and effect.

The court said that section 66A is “cast so widely that virtually any opinion on any subject would be covered by it, as any serious opinion dissenting with the mores of the day would be caught within its net”. The courts have also historically held that Article 19(1)(a) is as much about the right to receive information as it is to disseminate, and when there is a chilling effect on speech, it also violates the right to receive information. However, I would say that the court missed an opportunity to consider the blocking of websites under section 69A.

Why did the court uphold section 69A, and which other parts of the IT Act did it examine?

If section 66A was found to be arbitrary, then the procedure for blocking websites, as laid out in section 69A, is also beset with similar problems. The court, however, upheld this section and the rules under the IT Act on the grounds that there are internal safeguards and reasonable procedures. This section allows the government to block any site or information that violates Article 19(2) of the Constitution (which enables the legislature to impose certain restrictions on free speech).

The problem is that often there is no hearing or notice given to the owner of information, there is no transparency since blocks can happen on a confidential basis and these can have serious implications for the right to receive information.

The court read down section 79, which used to provide an intermediary exemption from liability with the exception that if it received “actual knowledge” of any illegal content, it was obliged to act within 36 hours. A study by the Centre for Internet and Society showed that even on sending frivolous takedown notices, intermediaries tended to comply to be on the safe side. The court’s decision has read down section 79 now to mean that “actual knowledge” means either an order of a court or the government. It moves it away from a subjective determination by intermediaries.

The court could have, like it did with section 79, retained section 66A while clarifying a procedure that would maintain a balance between the need sometimes to block and public interest, and transparency.

What does the judgement open up for the free speech debate?

The judgement speaks of chilling effects, because if one is not careful, one runs the risk of endangering political discourse through self-censorship. This is terrible for a democratic culture, which is premised on the ability to debate and dissent. Much of the use of section 66A has been politically motivated to silence criticism, and the judgement goes a long way towards promoting a culture of critique.

As the first major Supreme Court case on free speech in the 21st century, it sets the tone on how we think of free speech in a context where every individual with a smartphone is potentially a writer, a publisher and a distributor. By setting a high threshold for what is tolerated in online speech, it ensures that the online space is not doomed to be infantilized.

What position must the law take to protect rights and minority identities?

I think it is important to distinguish between different effects of speech. The court has merely reaffirmed a position that has been held in India for a long time (such as through the Ram Manohar Lohia judgement of 1960, which interpreted what “restriction made in the interests of public order” in Article 19(2) means). In other words, if someone is inciting violence, especially if they have the power to effect such violence (such as a politician), then their speech can be regulated, but the court also held that the idea of threat to public order is often imaginary.

For instance, in what way would Shaheen Dhada’s post on Facebook have incited violence? (In November 2012, Dhada, then a student and based in Palghar, Maharashtra, had written a post on Facebook commenting on the state of shutdown that followed politician Bal Thackeray’s death. Her comment was liked by her friend Srinivasan, and both of them were charged under section 66A.) So, the court is distinguishing between speech that is critical and speech that is dangerous. There are laws that deal with the latter, such as 153A and 295A of the IPC (Indian Penal Code).

It must be noted, however, that provisions also suffer from the same vice of vagueness. What we need is a more nuanced understanding of hate speech that addresses speech that incites violence or hatred against a community, but one in which the test is not of subjective hurt sentiment. The problem with hate speech laws is that they collapse questions of law and order with questions of subjective hurt, and we run the risk of becoming a republic of hurt sentiments where anyone can claim that their sentiments are hurt, especially their religious sentiments.

What happens to existing cases that are being tried under section 66A, such as the one against the organizers and participants of the All India Bakchod Roast?

Court judgements do not necessarily have retrospective effect, so cases that have been filed will continue. We must also remember that the cases filed under section 66A were also accompanied by other provisions. Of course, a judgement as significant as this, which completely delegitimizes section 66A, will have a profound impact on the ongoing cases insofar as they relate to the offence under the section, but the other charges remain.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-dhamini-ratnam-march-28-2015-sc-has-set-a-high-threshold-for-tolerance

India's Online Freedom Advocates Hail Court Ruling on Free Speech

praskrishna — 2015-03-27T01:43:22Z

Online freedom advocates in India are hailing a court ruling that struck down a controversial law seen as infringing free speech on the Internet. But in a country expected to have the world’s largest number of web users by 2018, some concerns about net censorship remain.

The blog post by Anjana Pasricha was published by Voice of America on March 24, 2015. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The 24-year old law student, Shreya Singhal, who spearheaded the legal battle for overturning the harsh law, said it was the arrest of two young women in 2012 for a seemingly innocuous Facebook post that prompted her to petition the Supreme Court. One woman had criticized a shutdown in Mumbai after the death of a Hindu nationalist leader Bal Thackeray, the other “liked” her post.

Like millions of others, Singhal was alarmed at their detention because she says she could have been the one to post the innocuous comment.

“It [the law] was punishing people for expressing their views on the Internet, whereas if they did it or they did it on TV or they did nit in newspapers, they would not get arrested for the same views,” she said.

Scrapping the law on Tuesday, India's Supreme Court said the Information Technology Act was vaguely worded, and did not explain what could be “inconvenient" or “grossly offensive.” The judgment said the law was liable to have a chilling effect on free speech as it strikes at the root of liberty and freedom of expression.

The law had raised alarm bells after several people were arrested in recent years for posting “objectionable content.” In the latest instance, a 16-year-old boy in Uttar Pradesh state was arrested and released on bail for posting an “insulting” remark about regional party leader, Azam Khan. Among others who were picked up under the law were a professor in Kolkata and a cartoonist in Mumbai.

The previous government, which passed the law, said it was necessary to combat abuse and defamation on the Internet, but critics said it was used by political parties to suppress dissent and criticism.

The Supreme Court ruling also made it tougher for the government to order Internet companies to remove online content.

Sunil Abraham of Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society says local and foreign Internet companies have faced growing pressure for putting up content deemed offensive in India.

“According to Facebook's latest transparency report, takedown requests and information requests from the Indian government continue to grow, and that is worrying. But that part of the law has been read down. Now when the government sends the takedown notice, it has to be accompany the takedown notice with a court order,” said Abraham.

But free speech campaigners say concerns about online censorship have not completely gone away. The Supreme Court has upheld a law that allows the government to block websites, saying there are sufficient safeguards.

Campaigners like Sunil Abraham think otherwise. “Lack of transparency makes it impossible for anybody to tell whether the government is censoring the Internet in a proportionate manner, whether it is working to truly address the real harms that emerge from bad content online. When the court in India bans books or movies, the judgments of these courts are made available to the public."

"But if when it comes to website blocking, this transparency requirement is missing. In fact, the law has secrecy provisions, which prevents ISP’s that receive these block orders from making them available in the public domain,” said Abraham.

The young student, Singhal, who led the legal battle, said she was “overwhelmed” at the victory for online freedom.

“We are such a diverse society in India with so many diverse and different opinions. It is inherent in us, it is part of us, this democracy, this debate we have,” she said.

Her views were echoed on Twitter and Facebook by people in India, a country of 1.2 billion people where Internet access is growing rapidly.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-march-24-2015-anjana-pascricha-indias-online-freedom-advocates-hail-court-ruling-on-free-speech

The noose tightens on freedom of speech on the Internet

praskrishna — 2015-03-27T01:06:52Z

A WORRYING trend has emerged in the last few years, where intermediaries around the world are being used as chokepoints to restrict freedom of expression online, and to hold users accountable for content.

The blog post by Gabey Goh was published by Digital News Asia on March 26, 2015. Jyoti Panday gave her inputs.

“All communication across the Internet is facilitated by intermediaries: Service providers, social networks, search engines, and more,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior global policy analyst Jeremy Malcolm.

“These services are all routinely asked to take down content, and their policies for responding are often muddled, heavy-handed, or inconsistent.

“That results in censorship and the limiting of people’s rights,” he told Digital News Asia (DNA) on the sidelines of RightsCon, an Internet and human rights conference hosted in Manila from March 24-25.

This year, the government of France is moving to implement regulation that makes Internet operators ‘accomplices’ of hate-speech offences if they host extremist messages.

In February, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) urged ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to ensure that domain name registries and registrars “investigate copyright abuse complaints and respond appropriately.”

Closer to home, the Malaysian Government passed a controversial amendment to the Evidence Act 1950 – Section 114A – back in 2012.

Under Section 114A, an Internet user is deemed the publisher of any online content unless proven otherwise. The new legislation also makes individuals and those who administer, operate or provide spaces for online community forums, blogging and hosting services, liable for content published through their services.

Due to the potential negative impact on freedom of expression, a roadmap called the Manila Principles on Internet Liability was launched during RightsCon.

The EFF, Centre for Internet Society India, Article 19, and other global partners unveiled the principles, whose framework outlines clear, fair requirements for content removal requests and details how to minimise the damage a takedown can do.

For example, if content is restricted because it’s unlawful in one country or region, then the scope of the restriction should be geographically limited as well.

The principles also urge adoption of laws shielding intermediaries from liability for third-party content, which encourages the creation of platforms that allow for online discussion and debate about controversial issues.

“Our goal is to protect everyone’s freedom of expression with a framework of safeguards and best practices for responding to requests for content removal,” said Malcolm.

Jyoti Panday from the Centre for Internet and Society India noted that people ask for expression to be removed from the Internet for various reasons, good and bad, claiming the authority of myriad local and national laws.

“It’s easy for important, lawful content to get caught in the crossfire. We hope these principles empower everyone – from governments and intermediaries, to the public – to fight back when online expression is censored,” she said.

The Manila Principles can be summarised in six key points:

Intermediaries should be shielded by law from liability for third-party content.

Content must not be required to be restricted without an order by a judicial authority.

Requests for restrictions of content must be clear, be unambiguous, and follow due process.

Laws and content restriction orders and practices must comply with the tests of necessity and proportionality.

Laws and content restriction policies and practices must respect due process.

Transparency and accountability must be built in to laws and content restriction policies and practices.

“Right now, different countries have differing levels of protection when it comes to intermediary liability, and we’re saying that there should be expansive protection across all content,” said Malcolm (pic).

“In addition, there is no logic in distinguishing between intellectual property (IP) and other forms of content as in the case in the United States for example, where under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, intermediaries are not liable for third party content but that doesn’t apply to IP,” he added.

The Manila Principles have two main targets: Governments and intermediaries themselves. The coalition, led by EFF, will be approaching governments to present the document and discuss the recommendations on how best to establish an intermediary liability regime.

This includes immunising intermediaries from liability and requiring a court order before any content can be taken down.

With intermediaries, the list includes companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, to discuss establishing transparency, responsibility and accountability in any actions taken.

“We recognise that a lot of the time, intermediaries are not waiting for a court order before taking down content, and we’re telling them to avoid removing content unless there is a sufficiently good reason and users have been notified and presented that reason,” said Malcolm.

The overall aim with the Manila Principles is to influence policy changes for the better.

Malcolm pointed out that by coincidence, some encouraging developments have taken place in India. On the same day the principles were released, the Indian Supreme Court struck down the notorious Section 66A of the country’s Information Technology Act.

Since 2009, the law had allowed both criminal charges against users and the removal of content by intermediaries based on vague allegations that the content was “grossly offensive or has menacing character,” or that false information was posted “for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will.”

Calling it a “landmark decision”, Malcolm noted that the case shows why the establishment and promotion of the Manila Principles are important.

“Not only is the potential overreach of this provision obvious on its face, but it was, in practice, misused to quell legitimate discussion online, including in the case of the plaintiffs in that case – two young women, one of whom made an innocuous Facebook post mildly critical of government officials, and the other who ‘liked’ it,” he said.

The court however, upheld section 69A of the Act, which allows the Government to block online content; and Section 79(3), which makes intermediaries such as YouTube or Facebook liable for not complying with government orders for censorship of content.

Gabey Goh reports from RightsCon in Manila at the kind invitation of the South-East Asian Press Alliance or Seapa.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/digital-news-asia-gabey-goh-march-26-2015-noose-tightens-on-freedom-of-speech-on-internet

Noose tightens on freedom of speech on the Internet

praskrishna — 2015-03-27T01:01:18Z

A worrying trend has emerged in the last few years, where intermediaries around the world are being used as chokepoints to restrict freedom of expression online, and to hold users accountable for content.

The blog post by Gabey Goh was originally published by Digital News Asia and mirrored in Malaymail Online on March 26, 2015. Jyoti Panday gave her inputs.

“These services are all routinely asked to take down content, and their policies for responding are often muddled, heavy-handed, or inconsistent.

“That results in censorship and the limiting of people’s rights,” he told Digital News Asia (DNA) on the sidelines of RightsCon, an Internet and human rights conference hosted in Manila from March 24-25.

This year, the government of France is moving to implement regulation that makes Internet operators “accomplices” of hate-speech offences if they host extremist messages.

In February, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) urged ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to ensure that domain name registries and registrars “investigate copyright abuse complaints and respond appropriately.”

Closer to home, the Malaysian Government passed a controversial amendment to the Evidence Act 1950 – Section 114A – back in 2012.

Under Section 114A, an Internet user is deemed the publisher of any online content unless proven otherwise. The new legislation also makes individuals and those who administer, operate or provide spaces for online community forums, blogging and hosting services, liable for content published through their services.

Due to the potential negative impact on freedom of expression, a roadmap called the Manila Principles on Internet Liability was launched during RightsCon.

The EFF, Centre for Internet Society India, Article 19, and other global partners unveiled the principles, whose framework outlines clear, fair requirements for content removal requests and details how to minimise the damage a takedown can do.

For example, if content is restricted because it’s unlawful in one country or region, then the scope of the restriction should be geographically limited as well.

The principles also urge adoption of laws shielding intermediaries from liability for third-party content, which encourages the creation of platforms that allow for online discussion and debate about controversial issues.

“Our goal is to protect everyone’s freedom of expression with a framework of safeguards and best practices for responding to requests for content removal,” said Malcolm.

Jyoti Panday from the Centre for Internet and Society India noted that people ask for expression to be removed from the Internet for various reasons, good and bad, claiming the authority of myriad local and national laws.

“It’s easy for important, lawful content to get caught in the crossfire. We hope these principles empower everyone – from governments and intermediaries, to the public – to fight back when online expression is censored,” she said.

The Manila Principles can be summarised in six key points:

Intermediaries should be shielded by law from liability for third-party content
Content must not be required to be restricted without an order by a judicial authority
Requests for restrictions of content must be clear, be unambiguous, and follow due process
Laws and content restriction orders and practices must comply with the tests of necessity and proportionality
Laws and content restriction policies and practices must respect due process
Transparency and accountability must be built in to laws and content restriction policies and practices

“In addition, there is no logic in distinguishing between intellectual property (IP) and other forms of content as in the case in the United States for example, where under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, intermediaries are not liable for third party content but that doesn’t apply to IP,” he added.

The Manila Principles have two main targets: Governments and intermediaries themselves. The coalition, led by EFF, will be approaching governments to present the document and discuss the recommendations on how best to establish an intermediary liability regime.

This includes immunising intermediaries from liability and requiring a court order before any content can be taken down.

With intermediaries, the list includes companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, to discuss establishing transparency, responsibility and accountability in any actions taken.

The overall aim with the Manila Principles is to influence policy changes for the better.

Malcolm pointed out that by coincidence, some encouraging developments have taken place in India. On the same day the principles were released, the Indian Supreme Court struck down the notorious Section 66A of the country’s Information Technology Act.

Since 2009, the law had allowed both criminal charges against users and the removal of content by intermediaries based on vague allegations that the content was “grossly offensive or has menacing character,” or that false information was posted “for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will.”

Calling it a “landmark decision,” Malcolm noted that the case shows why the establishment and promotion of the Manila Principles are important.

“Not only is the potential overreach of this provision obvious on its face, but it was, in practice, misused to quell legitimate discussion online, including in the case of the plaintiffs in that case – two young women, one of whom made an innocuous Facebook post mildly critical of government officials, and the other who ‘liked’ it,” he said.

The court however, upheld section 69A of the Act, which allows the Government to block online content; and Section 79(3), which makes intermediaries such as YouTube or Facebook liable for not complying with government orders for censorship of content. — Digital News Asia

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/malaymail-online-gabey-goh-march-26-2015-noose-tightens-on-freedom-of-speech-on-the-internet

Ruling in India shields Web posts

praskrishna — 2015-03-27T00:38:34Z

The Supreme Court in India struck down a section of its country’s information technology act Tuesday that had made it illegal for anyone to spread ‘‘offensive messages’’ on electronic devices and resulted in arrests over posts on Facebook and other social media.

This is the modified version of the article originally published by Washington Post and mirrored in Boston Globe. Sunil Abraham is quoted. Picture by Manjunath Kiran, AFP.

Supreme Court Judge Rohinton Fali Nariman wrote in the ruling that the section of the law, known as 66A, was unconstitutional, saying the vaguely worded legislation had wrongly swept up innocent people and had a ‘‘chilling’’ effect on free speech in the world’s most populous democracy.

‘‘Section 66A is cast so widely that virtually any opinion on any subject would be covered by it,’’ the judge wrote. ‘‘If it is to withstand the test of constitutionality, the chilling effect on free speech would be total.’’

India had first passed its Information Technology Act in 2000, but stricter provisions were added in 2008 and ratified in 2009 that gave police sweeping authority to arrest citizens for their personal posts on social media, a crime punishable for up to three years in jail and a fine.

Sunil Abraham, the executive director of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said that the section was originally intended to protect citizens from electronic spam, but it did not turn out that way.

‘‘Politicians who didn’t like what people were saying about them used it to crack down on online criticism,’’ he said.

In the end, there were more than 20 high-profile arrests, including a professor who posted an unflattering cartoon of a state political leader and an artist who drew a set of cartoons lampooning the government and Parliament.

The most well-known was the case of two young women arrested in the western town of Palghar after one of them posted a comment on Facebook that argued that the city of Mumbai should not have been shut down for the funeral of a famous conservative leader. A friend, who merely ‘‘liked’’ the post, was also arrested. After much outcry, the two were released on bail and the charges eventually dropped.

The case of the ‘‘Palghar Girls’’ inspired a young law student, Shreya Singhal, to take on the government’s law. Singhal became the chief petitioner for the case, along with other free speech advocates and an Indian information technology firm.

‘‘It’s a big victory,’’ Singhal said after the ruling. ‘‘The Internet is so far-reaching and so many people use it now, it’s very important for us to protect this right.’’

Singhal and other petitioners had also argued that another section of India’s technology act that allowed the government to block websites containing questionable material were also unconstitutional, but the court disagreed, saying there was a sufficient review process in place to avoid misuse.

Free speech in India is enshrined in the country’s constitution but has its limits. Books and movies are often banned or censored out of consideration for religious and minority groups.

In 2014, a conservative Hindu group persuaded Penguin India to withdraw a book on Hinduism by Wendy Doniger, a professor of religion at the University of Chicago, from the Indian market. And more recently, the government of India blocked a planned television debut of a documentary film on a 2012 gang rape case, ‘‘India’s Daughter.’’

Along with India, other nations have sharply increased monitoring and crackdowns on perceived insulting Web posts in recent years.

Across the Gulf Arab states, dozens of activists have been arrested for social media posts considered insulting to the country’s rulers or tarnishing the national image.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/boston-globe-march-25-2015-annie-gowen-ruling-in-india-shields-web-posts

India’s Supreme Court strikes down law that led to Facebook arrests

praskrishna — 2015-03-27T00:29:08Z

India’s Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a provision of a law that made it illegal to spread “offensive messages” on electronic devices and resulted in arrests over posts on Facebook and other social media.

The article by Annie Gowen was published in Washington Post on March 24, 2015. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

In a decision hailed as a victory for free speech, Judge Rohinton Fali Nariman ruled that Section 66A of the Information Technology Act was unconstitutional, writing that the vaguely worded legislation had wrongly swept up innocent people and had a “chilling” effect on free speech in the world’s most populous democracy.

“Section 66A is cast so widely that virtually any opinion on any subject would be covered by it,” the judge wrote. “If it is to withstand the test of constitutionality, the chilling effect on free speech would be total.”

India passed the Information Technology Act in 2000, and an amendment that went into effect in 2009 gave authorities broad powers to arrest those who post content deemed “grossly offensive” or false. The offense was punishable by up to three years in jail and a fine.

Sunil Abraham, the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said that the provision was originally intended to protect citizens from electronic spam but that it was used much more broadly.

“Politicians who didn’t like what people were saying about them used it to crack down on online criticism,” he said.

The section has resulted in more than 20 high-profile arrests, including that of a professor who posted an unflattering cartoon of a state political leader and an artist who drew cartoons lampooning the government and Parliament.

The most well-known was the case of two young women arrested in the western town of Palghar after one of them posted a comment on Facebook that said Mumbai should not have been shut down for the funeral of a famous conservative leader. A friend who merely “liked” the post also was arrested. After much outcry, the two were released on bail and the charges eventually dropped.

The case of the “Palghar Girls” inspired a young law student, Shreya Singhal, to take on the law. Singhal became the chief petitioner for the case, joined by other free speech advocates and an Indian information technology firm.

[When — and where — posting the wrong thing to Facebook can get you arrested]

“It’s a big victory,” Singhal said after the ruling. “The Internet is so far-reaching and so many people use it now, it’s very important for us to protect this right.”

In addition, Singhal and other petitioners had argued that a section of the Information Technology Act that allowed the government to block Web sites containing questionable material also was unconstitutional. The court disagreed, however, saying there was a sufficient review process in place to avoid misuse.

Free speech is enshrined in the Indian constitution but has its limits. Books and movies are often banned or censored out of consideration for the sentiments of religious and minority groups.

Last year, a conservative Hindu group persuaded Penguin India to withdraw a book on Hinduism by Wendy Doniger, a professor of religion at the University of Chicago, from the Indian market. And, more recently, the government halted the planned television debut of a documentary on a 2012 gang rape called “India’s Daughter.”

[India blocks film about 2012 New Delhi rape case]

The government, whose attorney had argued in court that the legislature was in the best position to understand the needs of the people, also welcomed the decision.

“The government is committed to free speech. India is a democratic country, and free flow of ideas should be respected. We do not seek to curtail any rights,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, the minister of communications and information technology. He cautioned, however, that social media users and platforms should show self-restraint.

In recent years, other nations also have sharply increased monitoring of and crackdowns on Web posts perceived as insulting.

Across the Persian Gulf Arab states, dozens of activists have been arrested for social media posts considered insulting to the countries’ rulers or damaging to the national image. In January 2014, an American national was allowed to leave the United Arab Emirates after serving more than eight months in prison for posting a YouTube video spoofing the UAE’s youth culture.

Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report. Picture: (Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-march-24-2015-indias-sc-strikes-down-law-that-led-to-fb-arrests