Posts
The Supreme Court Judgment in Shreya Singhal and What It Does for Intermediary Liability in India?
- April 11, 2015
Even as free speech advocates and users celebrate the Supreme Court of India's landmark judgment striking down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act of 2000, news that the Central government has begun work on drafting a new provision to replace the said section of the Act has been trickling in.
Read more →What Does Facebook's Transparency Report Tell Us About the Indian Government's Record on Free Expression & Privacy?
- April 05, 2015
Given India's online population, the number of user data requests made by the Indian government aren't very high, but the number of content restriction requests are not only high on an absolute number, but even on a per-user basis.
Read more →Security, Governments and Data: Technology and Policy
- April 04, 2015
On January 8, 2015, the Centre for Internet and Society, in collaboration with the Observer research foundation, hosted the day long conference "Security, Governments, and Data: Technology and Policy" The conference discussed a range of topics including internet governance, surveillance, privacy, and cyber security.
Read more →Three reasons why 66A verdict is momentous
- March 29, 2015
Earlier this week, the fundamental right to freedom of expression posted a momentous victory. The nation's top court struck down the much-reviled Section 66A of the IT Act — which criminalized communications that are "grossly offensive", cause "annoyance", etc — as "unconstitutionally vague", "arbitrarily, excessively, and disproportionately" encumbering freedom of speech, and likely to have a "chilling effect" on legitimate speech.
Read more →Big win for freedom of speech. Really?
- March 29, 2015
The 66A ruling was historic, but what about the provisions regulating speech online and offline that still exist within the ITA, the IPC and other laws.
Read more →What 66A Judgment Means For Free Speech Online
- March 27, 2015
This week India's Supreme Court redefined the boundaries of freedom of speech on the internet. With the Court's decision in Shreya Singhal & Ors. v. Union of India, Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, has been struck down in entirety and is no longer good law.
Read more →India's Supreme Court Axes Online Censorship Law, But Challenges Remain
- March 27, 2015
The Supreme Court of India took a remarkable step to protect free expression on March 24, 2015, striking down controversial section 66A of the IT Act that criminalized “grossly offensive” content online. In response to a public interest litigation filed by Indian law student Shreya Singhal, the court made this landmark judgement calling the section “vague”, “broad” and “unconstitutional”. Since Tuesday's announcement, the news has trended nationally on Twitter, with more than 50,000 tweets bearing the hashtags #Sec66A and #66A.
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