Social Media platform Twitter today arbitrarily and without prior notice blocked the account of India’s IT Minister RS Prasad’s account for an hour. The notice to the minister from Twitter said the account was locked on the ground that there was a violation of the ‘Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA’!
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of the United States is a copyright law that implements treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM). But Twitter has not specified as to which content of the IT Minister violates the DMCA and what has the act to do with India.
Though the Minister’s account was unlocked later, RS Prasad has said that Twitter’s actions came after he called out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter. “..sharing the clips of my interviews to TV channels and its powerful impact, have clearly ruffled its feathers”, he wrote in his Tweet.
He further said that it is now apparent as to why Twitter is refusing to comply with the Intermediary Guidelines because if Twitter does comply, it would be unable to arbitrarily deny access to an individual’s account which does not suit their agenda. “Twitter’s actions indicate that they are not the harbinger of free speech that they claim to be but are only interested in running their own agenda, with the threat that if you do not tow the line they draw, they will arbitrarily remove you from their platform”, wrote RS Prasad.
Reiterating the govt’s earlier stand on social media platforms must comply with the new IT rules, RS Prasad said that no matter what any platform does, they will have to abide by the new IT Rules fully and there shall be no compromise on that.
Balaji Subramanian 
Palak Dogra 
Aayush Pal