[‘Daily News Updates’ will provide you with a simplified understanding of the important economic/financial events across the country]
Twitter Loses Intermediary Status in India after Failure to Comply with new IT Rules
On 25th February 2021, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology notified the “Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021” (‘New IT Rules’) for the regulation of social media intermediaries (such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and digital media. The New IT Rules distinguishes between ‘social media intermediaries’ (with less than 50 lakh users) and ‘significant social media intermediaries’ (with more than 50 lakh users). Naturally, Twitter, with 1.75 crore users, falls in the latter. While some compliances are common to both categories, the ‘significant social media intermediaries’ must fulfill additional conditions.
The common compliances include- “(i) informing users about rules and regulations, privacy policy, and terms and conditions for usage of its services, (ii) blocking access to unlawful information within 36 hours upon an order from the Court, or the government, and (iii) retaining information collected for the registration of a user for 180 days after cancellation or withdrawal of registration.” In addition to these, the significant intermediaries have to appoint a Chief Compliance Officer to ensure compliance with the Rules, a resident grievance officer (to hear complaints from the users and dispose them off in 15 days), and publish a monthly compliance report.
The Government had provided three months, i.e., till 26th May, for social media intermediaries to comply with these Rules. However, Twitter has failed to comply with the Rules despite several notices. What happens when the Rules are not complied with? The provisions of Section 79 (1) of the IT Act will not apply to the intermediary. Section 79 (1) of the IT Act provides ‘safe harbour protections’ to social media intermediaries. In other words, it grants intermediaries with conditional immunity for any third-party communication hosted or made available by them. (Example- If ‘A’ posts defamatory content against ‘B’ on Twitter, Twitter won’t be liable). They shouldn’t have any knowledge of/control over such information and cannot exercise discretion over which material it wants to remove. If these protections are removed, Twitter will be liable under any Indian law (including penal laws) if the content it hosts is unlawful. Basically, it will be treated as a publisher instead of a postman.
This can open a can of worms, given the amount of activity on the site every minute. For instance, there was news regarding a Muslim man whose beard was chopped off, and he was forced to chant Jai Shri Ram. However, facts that emerged later showed that the incident did not have a communal angle, and some of the perpetrators were also Muslims. The Ghaziabad Police filed an FIR against nine entities, including Twitter, for failing to take action and allowing the fake news to become viral.
According to Twitter, it is going to comply with the Rules soon. Last week, it had said that “it is in the advanced stages of finalising the appointment of a chief compliance officer, and that it would submit additional details within a week.” Meanwhile, it claims that it has already appointed an interim compliance officer. Until the Rules are complied with, it is unlikely that the ‘safe harbour’ protections will be restored. According to the Government, other significant intermediaries have already complied with the Rules.
GST Collections may rise soon as per E-Way Bill Data
In a previous edition of ‘Daily News Updates,’ we had reported that the GST collections dropped to Rs. 1.02 lakh crores in May compared to the record collections in April (Rs. 1.41 lakh crores) owing to the second wave of the pandemic. However, the decrease is set to reverse in July based on the E-Way Bill data generated for the first two weeks of June. Before going further, two points need to be kept in mind- (i) GST collected in a month (say June) is paid by the 20th of the succeeding month (July), and (ii) E-Way Bill is produced by the seller of the goods before transporting goods worth more than Rs. 50,000 intra-state or of any value inter-state. Naturally, the higher the E-Way Bills generated, the higher the GST collected.
As reported by the Mint, the average E-Way Bills generated daily till 13th June stood at 1.61 million, 25% higher than the daily average in May. The daily average had first decreased in April (1.95 million), leading to decreased collections in May. It fell further in May (1.28 million), and the GST collections for June may be even lower. However, as the average has recovered in June, collections will also recover from July. This is a positive sign for the economy. [Note that all GST transactions do not require an E-Way Bill].
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