[Ed Note : The following is a guest post by Mr. Shailesh Gandhi, Former Central Information Commissioner under the framework of the RTI Act 2005, who has graciously agreed to express his views through this platform] First Define ‘Privacy’ The problem with the nine-judge ruling is that after proclaiming privacy as a fundamental right, it…
Category: Freedom of Speech
Fake News and Its Follies
Fake news may seem to be very innocuous and in fact might not seem to cause much harm to anyone or have any real-world consequences. Fake news is a phenomenon where a few individuals, sites and online portals create or/and share pieces of information either completely false or cherry-picked from real incidents with the intention…
A Victory, and Moving Forward – TRAI Consultations on OTTs
Last week, the Supreme Court of India in its judgment in the case of Shreya Singhal and Ors. v Union of India has decreed S. 66A of the Information Technology Act unconstitutional in its entirety, and at the same drastically restricted the ambit of Ss. 69A and 79 by reading into them the jurisprudence of…
Facebook, 'Internet.org' and the Ignored Questions of Civil Liberties
(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/4W8mW) Earlier yesterday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg met with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad (who curiously also holds the Ministry of Law and Justice portfolio). The Facebook CEO was in New Delhi on the 9th and 10th of October for the Internet.org…
Cross Media Ownership in India: Cause for Concern?
The following post is by Shashank Atreya, a student of School of Law, Christ University, Bangalore. He is a founding member of the Committee on Public Policy and Governance, School of Law, Christ University, and has headed research panels drafting suggestions to the Parliament Standing Committee and Law Commission. Shashank is a Media Law enthusiast, and…
The Pornography Question
(Image Source: https://flic.kr/p/aWsHkX) The Problem This post comes as a response to the recent litigation by Mr Kamlesh Vaswani in the Supreme Court. While the international stance towards pornography has been to allow adults to access it generally but absolutely prohibit certain kinds of pornography such as child porn, Mr Vaswani has asked for a…