The new IT rules that have come into effect in India from May 25 have created a lot of mess for the social media companies. The latest development comes from Google who has claimed that the new rules are not applicable to its search engine.
The search engine urged the Delhi High Court to set aside a single judge order which had applied the rules on the company while dealing with a problem related to the removal of offending content from the Internet. The issue was related to a woman’s photos that were being uploaded on a porn site by some wrongdoer.
Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh issued notice to the Centre, Delhi government, Internet Service Providers Association of India, Facebook, the pornographic site and the woman whose photos were uploaded. They had sought their responses to Google’s plea by July 25.
The court has informed that it is not going to issue any interim order at this stage. Google has claimed that the single judge had “mischaracterized” its search engine as a ‘social media intermediary’ or ‘significant social media intermediary’ as provided under the new rules, during his April 20 judgement.
“The single judge has misinterpreted and misapplied the New Rules 2021 to the appellant’s search engine. Additionally, the single judge has conflated various sections of the IT Act and separate rules prescribed thereunder, and has passed template orders combining all such offences and provisions, which is bad in law,” it has said in its appeal against the April 20 judgement.