Delhi HC: Guidelines For Quick Removal Of Offensive Content From Internet

The Delhi HC guidelines are to be followed by other courts in order to quickly remove offensive content from the internet.

The High Court of Delhi laid down certain guidelines which would be followed by other courts while dealing with the cases that intent to remove offensive or objectionable content from the internet. These changes are made to ensure that the content is taken down as soon as possible and is not reposted by anyone else.

Delhi HC guidelines

A bench headed by Justice A.J. Bhambhani gave the new set of guidelines. The court said in their statement that a direction must be issued to the online platform or website on which the content which violates the law is published. This direction must include the instructions to preserve the violating content. Though this content must be taken off the website, it must be preserved for at least a period of 180 days in case the authorities want to investigate further. This duration can also be increased depending on the case by the authority.

The judge then gave instructions to the police that the content must be delinked and dereferenced by all the search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Further, the court said that the police must also make sure that the content is taken down from all the sites that have published it. The Delhi police were also told to delete the web URL and the image URL.

Cybercrimes in India

In terms of the internet population, India ranks second on the list. Currently, Karnataka is the state with the maximum number of cybercrime cases. Dhanya Menon is the first woman cybercrime investigator. In her interview with SheThePeopleTV, Menon said, "Internet is not secured for any user. There is no gender discrimination in cybercrime. The thump rule is to learn how to use this technology. Awareness is the only solution."

Picture Credits : NDTV