Social media giant Twiter on Friday (June 25) blocked Union Minister for Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad from accessing his account for almost one hour over complaints that he violated copyright law by posting clips of himself from television debates.
“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 and subsequently they allowed me to access the account,” Mr Prasad said in a series of tweets.
“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,” he said.
“It is apparent that my statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter, particularly sharing the clips of my interviews to TV channels and its powerful impact, have clearly ruffled its feathers,” Mr Prasad added.
Friends! 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 and subsequently they allowed me to access the account. pic.twitter.com/WspPmor9Su
— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) June 25, 2021
According to Twitter, Prasad had violated “the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA.,” amid its months-long clash with the Central over issues ranging from requests to take down tweets supporting the farmers’ protest, discrediting posts by leaders of the BJP and more recently new regulation.
The government had told Twitter to follow compliance and appoint India-based compliance executives and other conditions which Twitter has thus far not implemented.
“Further, it is now apparent as to why Twitter is refusing to comply with the Intermediary Guidelines because if Twitter does comply, it would be unable to arbitrarily deny access to an individual’s account which does not suit their agenda,” Mr Prasad said.
“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 their platform,” the minister said.
“No matter what any platform does they will have to abide by the new IT Rules fully and there shall be no compromise on that,” he added.