Social media firm Twitter on Wednesday knowledgeable the High Court of Karnataka that its petition difficult the varied takedown orders of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) was maintainable, because the idea of reasonableness in Article 19 of the Constitution of India pertaining to Freedom of Speech was relevant to it.
Advocate Manu Kulkarni, showing for Twitter, submitted to the single-judge bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit that the Supreme Court within the ‘Shreya Singhal case’ had interpreted that Section 69A of the Information Technology Act integrated Article 19 of the Constitution.
I’ve my workplace in Bengaluru and providers are supplied in India, so I’m carrying on enterprise in India,” he argued.
The high court on Monday asked the Central government and Twitter to clarify the issue of how Indian entities would be treated in the US and foreign jurisdictions on such issues.
On Wednesday Twitter informed the high court that under Article 3 of the Constitution of the US, foreign nationals had the Constitutional Right to access courts in the United States.
The Court pointed out that a similar provision was absent in the Indian Constitution.
Kulkarni said Sections 83 to 87 of the Code of Civil Procedure were similar to Article 3 of the US Constitution.
Twitter’s counsel said the statement of objections by the government was inconsistent in matters related to takedowns, and a framework of guidelines may be needed.
He argued that Section 69A of the IT Act was being used to block accounts which amounted to blocking content that had not even been published.
“The blocking ought to be of knowledge that has already taken form and never the one which is but to come. The blocking is of the knowledge and never the very writer from whom the knowledge is generated,” he argued.
The court docket noticed: “Law is not just language, it is something more. It may amount to saying every dog will have one bite, before we term it a mad dog. But it will be very costly to the country. Suppose a person continuously tweets say 20 tweets, all venomous, then there is reason to assume that the 21st tweet will also be venomous. In such a way, we say it is better to block the account.” The court docket noticed that it was for the court docket to decide whether or not this was the intent when Section 69A was drafted by the Parliament.
The listening to was adjourned to April 17.
