A Surgical Strike

The government’s new guidelines for ethics and digital media are related to recent events but it has been in the works for some time. The legal implications are worth examining

- Na Vijayashankar

THE New Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Rules is no ordinary notification. It is a surgical strike on, as the government puts it, “Information Terrorism” defined by the Greta Thunberg-Disha Ravi toolkit episode and its impact on the violent events on Republic Day at the Red Fort. At the bail stage, those accused of such “Information Terrorism” were able to convince the lower court that the evidence was insufficient to keep them in jail. The government has now dealt a hard blow in the form of this notification.

The issue requires discussion both on the specific legal issues surrounding the powers of the government under the Information Technology Act and the Constitutional right of the “Freedom of Expression” and its derivative namely the “Freedom of Press”. In view of the possibility of this issue reaching the doors of the Supreme Court shortly, it is necessary for us to look at the legal aspects involved along with certain philosophical underpinnings about the impact of the Internet on society.

In the early days of cyber law development in India and elsewhere, there was a discussion about a utopian concept of a cyber society and the physical society functioning harmoniously with a distinct border in such a manner that freedom of netizens could be protected while physical society continued to be governed by the legacy environment.