PremiumNEW DELHI: American microblogging giant, Twitter, temporarily blocked IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s account on the platform today, citing violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to a post on Indian Twitter alternative Koo by Prasad, the company blocked access to his account for “almost an hour" but restored it later.
“Twitter’s actions were in gross violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account," Prasad said on Koo. “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 the platform," he added.
DMCA is a 1998 anti-piracy law enforced in the United States, which prevents the illegal duplication or selling of copyrighted works on the Internet. It seems Twitter’s algorithms blocked posts where the IT Minister had shared news clips of his own interviews with television channels. He pointed out that no television channel has complained about copyright infringements with such posts in “the past several years".
The microblogging giant has been in a tussle with the Indian government since last month, over compliance with the country’s new Intermediary Guidelines. The rules were notified in February and the government gave significant intermediaries like Twitter three months to comply. However, while Twitter has said that it will comply with the rules, it has also raised concerns about some of them. The government has said that Twitter is the only platform that hasn’t complied with the new rules.
“No matter what any platform does, they will have to abide by the IT Rules fully and there shall be no compromise on that," Prasad said today.
We have reached out to Twitter for a statement and will update this story if the company responds.
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