An Urgent Need for Reform
Much has been made by the government that web companies should comply with any order they recieve. In fact, under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, ensuring the protection of human rights requires firms to ensure that their operations do not result in knowing and preventable infringement of rights.
The UN’s Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Expression have also emphasised that web platforms should review the government orders they receive and ensure that measures are lawful, including being necessary and proportionate, before censoring online speech.
And as any news sector business in India would tell you, there are directives received from a range of government agencies that require narrowing and push-back all the time – some of which end up as court cases. So why should the situation be so different for online content?
At the minimum, if any of this goes into litigation as a bye-product of the Union government’s dispute with…