Centre's IT Rules against fake news may be excessive says Bombay HC

The Bombay High Court on Friday said the recently amended Information Technology IT Rules against fake content on social media against the government may be excessive quipping that one cannot bring a hammer to kill an antA division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Neela Gokhale also said it still does not understand the need behind the amendment to the Rules and stated it finds it difficult that one authority of the government is given absolute power to decide what is fake false and misleadingIn a democratic process the court said the government is as much a participant as a citizen is and hence a citizen has the fundamental right to question and demand answers and the government is dutybound to respondThe bench was hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the amended IT Rules Standup comedian Kunal Kamra the Editors Guild of India and the Association of Indian Magazines have filed petitions in the HC against the Rules terming them arbitrary and unconstitutional and claiming that they would have a chilling effect on the fundamental rights of citizensThe court also questioned who will factcheck the Fact Checking Unit FCU that is to be set up under the amended RulesThere is an assumption that what the FCU says is undeniably the ultimate truth Justice Patel saidOn Friday advocate Gautam Bhatia appearing for the Association of Indian Magazines started putting forth his arguments against the Rules Bhatia told the court that there are less restrictive options available to keep a check on fake content on social mediaThe bench noted that offline content has some filtration but there is no such factchecking for social media intermediaries as of nowThere should be some fact checking At some level someone must do fact checking of content on social media But you petitioners may be right to say that this Rules are excessive You cannot bring a hammer to kill an ant the court saidKeeping the aspect of excessive aside the bench said it is not yet able to understand what was the need for this amendment to the IT RulesWhat is the concern that necessitates this amendment What is the anxiety behind it I still do not know Justice Patel saidThe bench said no person is claiming a fundamental right to lie and all that a citizen is saying is that they have a right to defend the correctness of their statementThe bench said on the internet everything and everyone is a date and binary and a person can be anything they want and this was not necessarily impersonationThe court said the Rules were also silent on the boundaries of what is fake false and misleadingThe bench referred to the Citizenship Act and said If someone writes an opinion that the effect of the provisions of this Act was such and such then could such an opposing view be ordered to be taken down as fake false and misleading Because statute comes under government businessIs there nothing in the Rules that gives us a clue as to what the limit is That this is the limit to what would be considered fake false and misleading Does speculation make it fake false and misleadingiquest the court questionedThe court also pondered how an authority set up by the government can decide with finality what is true and what is fakeI find it difficult that the Rules give the Fact Checking Unit absolute power to decide that this is fake and this is misleading This is completely binary According to me except in a court of law nobody has the authority to pronounce what is true and false Even a court only says probably this may be the truth and probably this is false the bench saidThe court added that even without the amendment the government has the Press Information Bureau PIB that regularly posts on social media when there is any false or fake contentIs it the governments case that if not for the amendment the social media intermediaries will run amok the court saidOn April 6 this year the Union government promulgated certain amendments to the Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules 2021 including a provision for a factchecking unit to flag fake false or misleading online content related to the governmentThe three petitions sought the court to declare the amended Rules unconstitutional and direct the government to restrain from acting against any individual under the RulesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever