wordpress blog stats
Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

The Countless Ways the Fact-Check Amendment Violates Free Speech Rights, Limiting Political Speech

“No law can be made to curtail freedom of the press on grounds of public interest, which is not there in Article 19(2),” said Advocate Datar

This is the fourth in a series of articles. Read the first, second, and third parts.  “The right not to be told what is the truth by your government is what differentiates citizens from subjects...If we have to continue as fully informed, fully deliberative, fully engaging citizens in a democratic polity, it's necessary that this rule is constitutionally struck down,” argued Advocate Shadan Farasat appearing in the Editors Guild of India’s constitutional challenge to the Indian government’s plan to give a government-appointed unit power to fact-check government-related information online.  Across three days last week, multiple parties challenging the law before the Bombay High Court argued that it arbitrarily stifles free speech rights online, held under Article 19(1)(a), at the cost of keeping Indian citizens informed and engaged on dissenting views. The government has since promised to stay the law’s notification until July 28th.  “In order to approach the truth, or to get to the truth, you need Article 19(1)(a),” Farasat added. “That is, there can't be a truth in the absence of Article 19(1)(a)...It is the mechanism, through discussion, debate, disagreement, and dissent, to get to the best view possible in a given case, to get to the bottom of the facts. It could be opinion, it could be a factual issue.” Introduced through an amendment to India’s platform regulation rules, the IT Rules, 2021, platforms will lose safe harbour or protection from liability for third-party content, for failing to take down the flagged ‘fake’ information. Safe harbour is held…

Please subscribe/login to read the full story.
Written By

I'm interested in stories that explore how countries use the law to govern technology—and what this tells us about how they perceive tech and its impacts on society. To chat, for feedback, or to leave a tip: aarathi@medianama.com

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

MediaNama’s mission is to help build a digital ecosystem which is open, fair, global and competitive.

Views

News

The Central Board of Film Certification found power outside the Cinematograph Act and came to be known as the Censor Board. Are OTT self-regulating...

News

Jio is engaging in many of the above practices that CCI has forbidden Google from engaging in.

News

Is it safe to consider all "publicly available data" as public?

News

PhonePe launched an e-commerce buyer app for ONDC called Pincode. We, however, believe that it should also launch a seller app.

News

Amazon announced that it will integrate its logistics network and SmartCommerce services with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

You May Also Like

News

Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...

Advert

135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...

News

By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...

News

Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...

MediaNama is the premier source of information and analysis on Technology Policy in India. More about MediaNama, and contact information, here.

© 2008-2021 Mixed Bag Media Pvt. Ltd. Developed By PixelVJ

Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Name:*
Your email address:*
*
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

© 2008-2021 Mixed Bag Media Pvt. Ltd. Developed By PixelVJ

MediaNama