Breaking: Kerala High Court Issues Notice On LiveLaw's Plea Challenging New IT Rules; Orders No Coercive Action

The Kerala High Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Central Government on a writ petition filed by LiveLaw challenging the constitutional validity of Information Technology (Guidelines For Intermediaries And Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, notified by the Centre on February 25, as imposing "arbitrary, vague,disproportionate and unreasonable" restrictions on digital news media and social media intermediaries. A single bench of Justice PV Asha also restrained the Central Government from taking any coercive action against LiveLaw under Part III of the IT Rules, which deal with digital media regulation."The Respondents shall not take any coercive action against petitioners for non-compliance of the provisions contained in Part 3 of IT Rules, as the petitioners are the publishers of law reports and legal literature", the interim order passed by Justice Asha of Kerala HC says.The petition was filed by LiveLaw News Media Pvt Ltd, the publisher of online legal news website www.livelaw.in, challenging the Rules as illegal and violative of Articles13,14, 19(1)(a), 19(1)(g), and 21 of the Constitution of India and also ultra vires the parent Act, the Information Technology Act. The other petitioners in the case are M.A Rashid and Manu Sebastian, Founder & Chief Editor and Managing Editor of LiveLaw respectively.Read the interim order passed by Kerala High Court restraining coercive action against LiveLaw for non-compliance of provisions of Part III of the new IT( Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. pic.twitter.com/stoRNgzwhz— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) March 10, 2021 Petitioner's argumentsAdvocate Santhosh Mathew, appearing for the petitioners, submitted before the bench that the Information Technology Act did not confer any rule-making power on the Central Government to regulate digital media.He argued that the regulatory mechanism under the Rules are invasive, disproportionate and arbitrary. They cannot be termed as "reasonable restrictions" under Article 19(2) of the Constitution. "We are reporting judgments. Somebody to whom the judgment is not palatable, may make a grievance, and we are required to sit in appeal over the content", Mathew indicated the possible hardships caused by the rules.He also pointed out that LiveLaw publishes articles and opinion pieces on legal affairs, and persons who may disagree with such views can use the Rules to file complaints. The Rules are undoing the procedural safeguards ensured by the Supreme Court in the Shreya Singhal judgment for intermediary regulation. "The intermediary applying its own mind whether content is to be blocked is absent in Section 69A, the SC noted in Shreya Singhal. The problem is we have to sit in judgment over objections", he pointed out.Illustrating difficult situations possible due to the Rules, Mathew said :"Mr.A is writing an article. Somebody takes an objection. I am obliged to take it down. It could be a retired Supreme Court judge writing the article. I cannot issue a notice to him. This can put us in a lot of embarrassing situations".He emphasized that reasonable restrictions on fundamental rights under Article 19 can be imposed only through a law enacted by the legislature. The presumption of constitutionality is not applicable to the executive rules.Centre's argumentsCentral Government Counsel Suvin Menon argued that the source of power of the Rules can be traced to Sections 69A and 69B of the IT Act. Even if those provisions are not mentioned in the Rules, that by itself will not make them bad in law, as the substantive rule-making power of the authority is not affected by the mere non-mentioning of the source of power."I will place on record the background. Post 2010 social media activism has been in the high. Several news media outlets have developed. Are these persons not accountable?", the CGC submitted.Justice PV Asha at this juncture observed that there should be exemption for law reports. The CGC replied that there was no problem with the reporting of the judgments but the publication of the articles need oversight. "There are articles which are contemptuous", the CGC said."The Court will take care of it", Justice Asha replied.Asserting that the editor and publisher will be liable for the articles published, the CGC submitted :"It is not that they are publishing everything that is transmitted to them. Articles which have personal opinion of the author, who is accountable?. They are also liable. Because they are providing the medium. Lakhs of people are reading these article"."I am not saying I am not liable. I am only saying under Section 69A IT Act they have no power to regulate me", Santhosh Mathew responded.The CGC submitted that the Rules contemplate a three level regulatory framework and the Ministry's oversight comes only after the levels of internal-regulation and self-regulatory bodies."How can this get better than this?", the CGC asked.Santhosh Mathew responded that the...

Breaking: Kerala High Court Issues Notice On LiveLaw's Plea Challenging New IT Rules; Orders No Coercive Action

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