Kriti Agrawal
Google LLC asked the Delhi High Court to overturn a single Judge’s order that applied the IT rules to the company in a case involving the removal of offending content from the internet and argued that the Information Technology rules for digital media do not apply to its search engine.
The single Judge made the decision while dealing with a case in which some miscreants uploaded a woman’s photographs to a pornographic website, and despite Court orders, the content could not be completely removed from the Internet, and errant parties merrily continued to re-post and redirect the content to other sites.
A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh issued notice to the Centre, the Delhi government, the Internet Service Providers Association of India, Facebook, the pornographic site, and the woman whose plea had resulted in the single Judge’s ruling, asking them to respond to Google’s petition by July 25.
The Court also stated that no interim orders would be issued at this time.
Google claims that the sole Judge mischaracterized its search engine as a social media intermediary” or “major social media intermediary as defined by the new laws in his April 20 ruling.
Appeal against the April 20 decision stated, “The Single Judge applied the New Rules 2021 incorrectly to the appellant’s search engine. Furthermore, the single Judge has confused multiple sections of the IT Act and independent rules enacted thereunder, and has issued template judgments incorporating all of these offences and regulations, which is unconstitutional in law.”
