MC: I think you’re rightly pointing out to Rule 16 of confidentiality, which are different rules, not the IT Rules. But what we’ve seen in terms of secrecy is that every time content is being taken down, there is now a secret communication between the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MetiY) and the companies.
Then some companies will send a notification to the person whose content has been taken down. And they would just say ‘we got a request from the government and now we are taking your content down’. That was supposed to be for the emergency powers of the executive to block access to information on digital platforms.
But now, we’ve expanded it to say whenever the government tells you to remove anything, then you’re bound to do that, because there are open warnings that we’ll take away your safe harbour provision. Nobody takes away safe harbour provision. It’s a legal defense mechanism, but obviously our courts are also not implementing or giving orders for what the loss is.
Source: Barandbench
