Activists demand scrapping IT rules

A group of NGOs on Saturday demanded scrapping of the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011 which mandated taking down the contents from a website within 36 hours after receiving a complaint on the ground that it violated right to freedom of speech and expression.

A programme called “Freedom in Cage” will be organised on Sunday at Jantar Mantar here by a group of artists, musicians and internet users to mobilise support against, what they termed, internet censorship.

They contended that the IT Rules would result in private policing. Under the new mechanism, intermediaries like Google, Facebook and Yahoo would be forced to disable any content that fell foul of “incredibly broad and ambiguous criteria.”

“Any content that is critical of state policy, any organisation or even any individual could run the risk of being censored, thanks to the rules. The rules also violate the right to freedom of speech and expression and the right to privacy of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution,” Mishi Choudhary of Software Freedom Law Centre said.

The government notified the Rules on April 13 last year under the Information Technology Act, 2000, which required the intermediaries to provide the agencies information of users without any safeguards.