Mouthshut creates history in protecting freedom. Review on Mouthshut

Earlier today: MouthShut.com‘s petition challenging the IT Rules based on section 79 of the IT Act 2008 has been admitted by the Supreme Court of India, MouthShut.com founder Faisal Farooqui has confirmed to MediaNama. From what we’ve heard, the court has issued a notice to the Union of India, Department of Information Technology and various states; We’ll have more info on this, once we have a copy of the order, and a statement from Farooqui. Harish Salve appeared on behalf of MouthShut.com. The petition challenges all the section 79 rules, including clauses 2, 4 and 7(details below), which define the due diligence to be observed by the intermediary, and intermediary liability.

The Section 79 rules put the onus of censorship on intermediaries – on everyone from ISPs to Cybercafes and websites like ours. The rules are structured in a way that intermediaries will comply with any complaint in order to free themselves of any liability; the rules put the onus of playing judge on intermediaries, hamper freedom of expression, and do not provide a recourse to the person whose content or comments are being censored. The terms defined in clause 2(see below) are too broad, and provide room for censorship of free speech.

Because of the structuring of the rules, intermediaries are much too trigger happy, if only to protect themselves. This was proven by a sting operations that the Centre for Internet and Society had conducted last year, wherein they sent frivolous complaints intermediaries to test the IT Rules, and found that the content was removed in most cases. Mishi Choudhary, founding Director of the Software Freedom Law Center India, told MediaNama that “There is a problem in the IT rules issued under section 79. They go far beyond the legislative intent, and safe harbor should be provided to intermediaries to protect free speech”.