Union electronics and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said that Twitter denied access to his account for nearly an hour quoting alleged copyright infringement. He linked the action to his statements calling out Twitter’s “high-handedness and arbitrary actions.”
Taking is to the Indian microblogging platform Koo, the union minister tweeted, “something highly peculiar happened today. Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA.” Twitter subsequently allowed access to his account, he added.
Prasad has called the denial of access a gross violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. He added that Twitter did not send him any prior notice before denying his account’s access.
The microblogging site has been at loggerheads with the Centre over the new controversial social media and intermediary rule. The government rebuked the platform for failing to comply with the new IT guidelines. It has warned the non-compliance could result in Twitter’s loss of safe harbour in India under the IT Act.
However, Twitter has raised concerns about the safety of its employees in India and tagged police intimidation.
The site and the Centre have also clashed over orders to block access to content and marking of posts by Modi led Bhartiya Janata Party leaders as manipulated media.
Prasad said it is evident that why Twitter is denying to comply with the new guidelines. He added it is because if it complies, it would be not be able to arbitrarily deny access to an person’s account which does not qualify its agenda.
“Furthermore, in the past several years, no television channel or any anchor has made any complaints about copyright infringements with regard to these news clips of my interviews shared on social media.”
Prasad condemned the microblogging platform saying that its actions reveal it was 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”.
He added that the platform should have to abide by the new guidelines completely and there would be no compromise.
