Legal experts have mixed responses over abolition of Section 66A

BENGALURU: The Supreme Court striking down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 - which allowed law keepers to make arrests for posting objectionable virtual content - has brought cheers and worries to legal experts in Bengaluru, the IT capital.

The apex court on Tuesday said Section 66A clearly affects the right to freedom of speech and expression enshrined under the Constitution.

The immediate ramification of this is that posting “offensive” comments online is no longer a punishable crime by imprisonment.

“This is really important for a tech-savvy city like Bengaluru,” says Lawrence Liang from the Alternative Law Forum. It was two weeks ago that a Bengaluru-based Twitter user had to take down her tweets after she was hounded by threats of invoking Section 66A. She was aided by Liang’s team.

“Although Bengaluru hasn’t had arrests under this section, there was an undeclared state of emergency and people were very hesitant.”

Advocate Nitin R welcomed the SC decision, but believes social media still needs control. “For one thing, 66A was making a mockery of criminal law by using words such as annoyance. But social media can be used as an important tool for illegal acts. While 66A was trying to cover defamation, it can still be done through civil law,” he says.

Section 66A made punishable any information - grossly offensive or causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will - send through a computer resource or communication device with imprisonment upto three years.

“Personally, I’m not totally happy about it,” says A Nagarathna, an assistant professor specializing in IT laws at the National Law School of India University. “By striking down the entire section, one can no longer criminalize spams and sending of messages by misleading one’s identity, which is a big disadvantage. Some parts of the 66A should have been retained.”