-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Justifying retention of penal provision of Section 66A of Information Technology Act for posting offensive material on social networking sites, the Centre on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that reach and impact of internet was wider and the level of restriction on this medium should be higher in comparison to print and television. Unlike print and electronic media, the web did not exist and operate in...

-The Hindu Business Line Article 66A of the Information Technology Act has no place in a free and democratic society If everybody who ever offended anybody - intentionally or otherwise - is to be locked up, then half the country would be behind bars. It is astonishing, therefore, that provisions in the law which mandate precisely such an outcome for offending someone - without, moreover, even defining what exactly is meant by...

-The Hindu Washington: A top global human rights group has criticised the Indian government for its treatment of minorities, lack of protection for women's and children's rights, restrictions on Free speech and insufficient support extended for human rights via New Delhi's foreign policy engagements. In its 25th annual World Report on human rights, New York-headquartered Human Rights Watch noted that there was a "spike" in incidents of violence against religious minorities in...

-The Hindustan Times Search engines such as Google India, Yahoo India and Microsoft were Wednesday restrained by the Supreme Court from flashing advertisements promoting sex determination of a foetus. A bench headed by justice Dipak Misra took strong exception that the three engines continued to carry advertisements on their web pages even though pre-natal sex determination is illegal in India. "If any advertisement existed on any search engine, these should be withdrawn forthwith,"...

-The Indian Express The NDA government took over from the UPA more than eight months ago but it appears to be deja vu for activists fighting against the constitutionality of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which empowers police to arrest people for social media posts. Following the previous government's line, the NDA regime has lent its support to the validity of Section 66A, saying the "danger was present and clear"...