SC slams ‘irresponsible’ social media companies
NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday pulled up social media platforms and search engines for being “irresponsible” and not taking sufficient steps to stop circulation of “objectionable materials” that is leading to lynching incidents across the country.
A bench of Justice Lokur and Justice UU Lalit also warned the social media giants that a fine of ₹5 lakh per day would be imposed on them if they failed to develop a foolproof mechanism to prevent circulation of sexual assault videos and child pornography through their platforms within a month.
“What type of attitude you are all adopting? There is so much objectionable material on the social media sites. People are being lynched across the country. People are dying at various places, but you (social media sites) seem to be not bothered. You are saying that as long as it does not happen to me, it is ok, when it happens to me, then we will look into it,” Justice MB Lokur told the panel of lawyers representing Facebook Ireland, Facebook India, Google India, Google Inc, Microsoft, Whatsapp and Yahoo. The judge’s remarks come against the backdrop of rumours triggering lynching incidents across the country and were made during a hearing on a PIL filed by Non-government Organisation (NGO) Prajwala seeking the top court’s intervention in stopping circulation of child pornography and sexual assault videos.
Appearing for the NGO, advocate Aparna Bhat said perpetrators of sexual assaults often recorded the crime and circulated the video through social media. She argued that despite giving assurances, the social media firms had failed to stop circulation of such videos.
Bhat demonstrated in the court that except desktops, sexual assault videos and child pornography were easily accessible through laptops and smartphones.
“How can you people be so irresponsible? So much material is still available on the social media sites. But you don’t want to do anything because you don’t want to own any responsibility. So let people die you will not do anything,” remarked Justice Lokur.
Bhat said none of the companies had bothered to come out with a suitable mechanism, despite the recommendations made by the court-appointed committee in the case.
The lawyers of the companies argued that they were facing difficulties in complying with the panel’s directive due to technical difficulties.
‘The court, however, threatened to impose a heavy fine on the companies following which the firms’ counsel gave an undertaking to comply with the court’s directive within 30 days
On May 19, the Supreme Court has slapped fine of ₹1 lakh each on internet giants like Google India, Google Inc Facebook and Whatsapp for failing to file their replies on the steps taken by them to block videos of sexual offences on social media sites. NEW DELHI: The continuous revision of GST rates with reduction for 384 commodities and no hike for any product has been the largest mass tax reduction since Independence, said Union minister Arun Jaitley in a Facebook post on Friday. “If the entire category of all the slabs is taken, the past one year has seen reduction of tax in 384 commodities with no increase on a single product. India has never witnessed such mass tax reduction since Independence. Lesser rates and higher collection is the result,” wrote Jaitley.
He exuded confidence that GST rates on cement, ACS and televisions will be cut as tax revenues increase, and only luxury and sin goods will attract the highest slab of 28%. He mentioned that 68 different categories of services have also witnessed their rate reduction. Criticizing the pre-gst indirect tax regime with multiple central and state levies often with cascading effect, Jaitley called it that ‘Congress Legacy Tax’.
The Congress retorted calling GST an imperfect tax.
“When the GST rates were fixed there was uncertainty about revenue collection so the taxes were on the higher side. But the rollout showed the need to reduce these taxes since they were indeed high, so is that not a goof-up? What this government can rightly take credit for is in the successful implementation of GST, which was pending for years,”said former chief statistician of India Pronab Sen. Goods and Services Tax (GST), which subsumed 17 local taxes, was rolled out on July 1, 2017 and Jaitley added that this reduction of tax rates and its impact on revenue collection will be entirely borne by the central government.
“The net revenue loss which Government have suffered on account of the reduction of tax on goods and services is about Rs 70,000 crore. Since State Governments have been guaranteed a 14 per cent increase over their pre-gst revenues for the first five years, this burden has entirely been borne from the share of the Central Government,” Jaitley said.
Jaitley referred to the amendment to the Prevention of Corruption Act as the second economic reform in the last week, saying that will it ensure that honest officers will not be harassed by investigative agencies in the process of booking the corrupt. Jaitley said that in the 30-year old anti-corruption law, which was enacted in pre-liberalisation regime and had not anticipated the kind of risk which could be faced by honest decision makers.
The Congress retorted by saying the amendments were pending since 2013. “Mr. Jaitley is shedding crocodile tears for bureaucrats as the amendments were pending since 2013. He has become an expert on giving opinions through Facebook and he has been forced to write this blog to deviate attention from the mega bank scam that surfaced recently in Pune. It is his effort to shield the BJP leaders involved in that bank scam. The party which has not appointed any Lokpal, is forcing changes to the RTI Act and is opaque about the Rafale deal should not talk about transparency in governance,” Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill.