New Delhi: Union Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that Twitter locked his account for about an hour and it was restored again. He wrote that Twitter attributed this to America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Ravi Shankar Prasad said that this action of Twitter is in violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology Rules 2021 (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code), under which he did not give any notice before removing the access to the account.
Ravi Shankar Prasad has shared on Twitter the screenshot of the account being locked and getting access again. The notice on account locking reads, “Your account has been locked because Twitter has received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint on content posted from your account. Under the DMCA a copyright claimant can notify Twitter that the user has infringed on their copyrighted works. Upon receipt of this notice, Twitter will remove the relevant content.”
On closing the account access, Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote, “It is clear that this kind of arbitrary action has been taken by Twitter because of my statements. The sharing of my interviews on TV channels and its huge impact has clearly upset Twitter.”
He further wrote that it is now clear why Twitter is refusing to follow the intermediary guidelines, because if Twitter does so, it will not be able to arbitrarily block access to the account of anyone who does not fit its agenda. Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote that it does not matter which platform does what, they will have to abide by the new IT rules and there will be no compromise with it.
He wrote, “This Twitter action shows that they are not the leaders of free speech as they claim to be. Rather, they are only interested in running their agenda. With the threat that if you don’t follow in their footsteps they will forcibly remove you from their platform.”
