A Balancing Act

In a landmark ruling, the Delhi High Court ordered social media giants to remove on a global basis content defamatory to Ramdev, thereby balancing the right to defend oneself with that of free speech

- Na Vijayashankar

IN a bold and innovative judgment, the Delhi High Court has opened up new jurisprudential thought on some aspects of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (ITA-2000) which may have far-reaching con sequences.

On October 23, in the Baba Ramdev Vs Facebook/Google/Twitter case, the High Court judgment delivered by the single-judge bench of Justice Prathiba M Singh attracted global attention. It said that its take-down order in respect to defamatory content against yoga guru Baba Ramdev should be applied worldwide and that it would not be sufficient if the intermediaries only blocked visitors accessing the content from India.

While Facebook was directed to ensure that links of a video containing allegations against Ramdev be removed, the Court said that Google and YouTube had removed the video from their platforms. The judgment said: “The video clearly is violative of the guidelines which Google and YouTube have prescribed for themselves. The video is also not just offensive against the plaintiffs (Patanjali Ayurved Ltd and Ramdev) but could border on threats constituting violations of law.” It added, “In view of the stand taken by Google and YouTube, since the video itself has now stated to have been taken down not just on the India domain but from all the international platforms of Google and YouTube, no further orders are required to be passed in the present suit,” and disposed of the suit.

However, on October 31, the Delhi High Court admitted an appeal by Facebook against Justice Singh’s order. A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Talwant Singh said that it hoped that the arguments would conclude on December 7 and that it would not be passing any interim order.