Twitter loses legal protection in India

  • Twitter has lost legal protection in India over its failure to appoint statutory officers in line with the new IT rules. 
  • The microblogging platform lost legal indemnity in India after it failed to comply with new social media rules which required it to appoint key officers in India. 
  • Twitter, however, said it had complied with the Indian government’s new IT rules and appointed an interim Chief Compliance Officer.

THE LEGAL COVER

  • An 'intermediary' status gives social media platforms immunity from liabilities over any third-party data hosted by them. 
  • The implications of losing legal cover or status as a social media intermediary are serious. 
  • Twitter would remain exposed to the provisions of law and not enjoy legal immunity as an intermediary and be liable like a publisher for objectionable content.
  • With the legal cover provided by Section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act gone, Twitter employees starting from its head in India will be held liable for any post on the platform that violates any law of the land.
  • Section 79 says that any intermediary shall not be held legally or otherwise liable for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted on its platform.
  • This protection, the Act says, shall be applicable if the said intermediary does not in any way initiate the transmission of the message in question, select the receiver of the transmitted message, and does not modify any information contained in the transmission.
  • After Twitter failed to appoint a compliance officer as mandated by the rules, the US-based tech giant automatically lost its status as a social media intermediary.




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